September 21, 2011
High honor: Wright new fellow of division of the American Psychological Association
Submitted by Communications and Marketing
Thomas A. Wright, Kansas State University's Jon Wefald Leadership Chair in Business Administration, is being recognized with fellow status by a key division of the American Psychological Association.
Wright, who also serves as director of K-State's Center for Character-based Leadership and a professor of management, has been elected a fellow by Division 5 -- Evaluation, Measurement and Statistics -- of the American Psychological Association. He is one of only 327 current members of the 154,000-member American Psychological Association to receive the honor.
To become a Division 5 fellow, individuals must have made outstanding contributions to the fields of evaluation, measurement and statistics, and the work must have had significant impact. Wright's many contributions include hypothesis testing, power analysis, the role of time and timing in longitudinal research, sample size determination and meta-analysis.
Wright's methodological work has been published in many prestigious academic journals, including Psychometrika, Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Review and the Journal of Supply Chain Management. He currently serves as co-editor of the Researcher's Notebook section of the Journal of Organizational Behavior. The section addresses such confusing methodological research topics as the estimation of interaction effects and sample size requirements in multiple regression analysis.
In addition to his election to Division 5 fellow, Wright is also a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Association for Psychological Science, the Western Psychological Association and an at-large fellow of the American Psychological Association. He is the first K-State scholar to achieve fellow status in each of these prestigious professional organizations.
"It's truly an honor to be recognized by election to fellow status in Division 5 of the American Psychological Association," Wright said. "One crucial way for K-State to achieve its 2025 goal of being a top 50 public research institution is to attract and retain world-class scholars who are widely recognized by their peers. I am very proud to bring this positive recognition to K-State."
"Fellow status on Division 5 of the American Psychological Association is an honor bestowed on a few faculty members nationwide," said Ali Malekzadeh, dean of the College of Business Administration. "The honor speaks highly of the quality of the faculty in the College of Business Administration."
Along with his methodological contributions, Wright is best known for his research on employee psychological well-being and character-based leadership. He has been published in many of the leading business and social science journals and has been widely cited by online, print, radio and television outlets, including Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today, New York Daily News, Science Daily, Science Week and many others. The winner of numerous teaching and research awards, he has served as associate editor for two leading management journals, the Journal of Management and the Journal of Organizational Behavior.