Ou Lydia Liu, Senior Research Director at the Educational Testing Service (ETS), has been selected for the 2019 Robert L. Linn Memorial Lecture Award, and she will present the lecture "Assessing Skills for a New Economy” on Thursday, Sept. 19 from 3-4:30 p.m. at the CU Boulder's Old Main Chapel.
In her lecture, Liu will provide an overview from research she has conducted on the match between the skills that major companies and employers claim to value in college graduates and the skills that are most commonly emphasized by institutions of higher education. She will then focus on recent approaches that are being taken to develop and validate measures of cognitive skills collected in workplace settings. Liu leads the Academic to Career Research Center at ETS, the world's largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization that aims to "provide innovative and meaningful measurement solutions that improve teaching and learning, expand educational opportunities, and inform policy."
"Lydia has cast a wide net, intent on mastering all elements of measurement, from practical work in projects to theoretical studies," said Mark Wilson, professor at University of California, Berkeley. "But she is someone who has always seen the real motivation for her chosen work in the contribution it can make to promoting good education."
Co-hosted by the CU Boulder School of Education and its Center for Assessment, Design, Research & Evaluation (CADRE), the lecture is free and open to the public. A reception with refreshments will follow.
The Robert L. Linn Memorial Lecture Award was named in honor of the late "Bob" Linn who was an inspirational leader in the field of measurement and policy and professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of California, Los Angeles for more than 40 years. The lecture, held alternately at CU Boulder and UCLA, was created by Linn’s wife Joyce Linn to honor early or midcareer scholars who exemplify insightful and interdisciplinary contributions to educational measurement and policy. Support this effort by giving to the Robert and Joyce Linn Endowment at giving.cu.edu/BobLinn.