On behalf of the review committee for the UCLES/ILTA Lifetime Achievement Award (comprised of Glenn Fulcher, Jim Purpura, Nick Saville, and myself—John Clark) it is a great pleasure to announce that after carefully considering the several and highly meritorious nominations received from the field, Dr. Charles W. (Charlie) Stansfield has been selected to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award to be presented in Barcelona, Spain, at the 2007 Language Testing Research Colloquium (LTRC), sponsored by the International Language Testing Association (ILTA).

Dr. Stansfield is currently president of Second Language Testing, Inc. (SLTI), a company which he founded in 1994 and through which he has continued to engage in numerous test development projects and related activities on behalf of the foreign/second language profession. Prior to assuming his SLTI responsibilities, Dr. Stansfield served from 1986-1994 as director of the Foreign Language Education and Testing Division at the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), where he played a major role in the development and validation of the Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview (SOPI), a semi-direct measure that has been well accepted and widely used as an alternative to face-to-face speaking proficiency testing.

Dr. Stansfield's work at CAL was preceded by a five-year tenure as associate director of the Language Programs division at Educational Testing Service, during which time he was intensively involved in the development and introduction of the Test of Spoken English (TSE) and the Test of Written English (TWE) into the expanding TOEFL program. In this connection, Charlie conducted important research studies on test rater performance and on the development of scoring rubrics that could be uniformly applied across diverse speaking and writing topics.

Other positions held by Dr. Stansfield include an associate professorship in Spanish at the University of Colorado; directorship of the Peace Corps training center in Managua, Nicaragua; and directorship of the University of Colorado's study abroad programs in Xalapa, Mexico and Valencia, Spain.

The totality of Dr. Stansfield's thirty-year career has involved extensive, hands-on experience in virtually every aspect of the foreign/second language testing endeavor. This has ranged from a thorough grounding in classroom testing techniques and associated issues, up to significant development and administrative roles in large-scale, high-stakes testing programs. His operational contributions to these numerous and varied testing activities have been supported and conceptually informed by similarly impressive professional and academic accomplishments, as attested to by some eighty monographs, book chapters, and articles on second/foreign language testing published in major journals in the field.

In addition to all of the preceding, Charlie has consistently and very willingly rendered diligent and collegial service to the advancement of the language testing profession as a whole. His contributions in this regard have included serving on the editorial boards of five major journals (TESOL Quarterly, Modern Language Journal, Journal of Second Language Writing, Language Testing, and Journal of Language for International Business) and on the advisory boards for the National Foreign Language Resource Centers at the University of Hawaii and the University of Minnesota, as well as serving as the director of a similar center at CAL. Most particularly, the birth and formative development of ILTA itself is correctly—and very appropriately—credited to Dr. Stansfield, who not only conceptually spearheaded but also willingly and successfully took on the considerable coordination and practical work needed to bring the organization into existence and to serve as its first president.

In sum, our profession owes a large debt of gratitude to Dr. Charles Stansfield, not only for his past contributions to the field but also for his present and continuing involvement in important language testing activities and associated measurement issues at both the national and international levels.

ILTA 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award Lecture

Abstract

Where we have been and where we should go.

This presentation will review how the field of language testing has increased in stature and professionalism in the last 20 years. It will also provide some ideas for how we can increase our presence and importance in the future. We are well beyond the days when we were not even recognized as a field of applied linguistics. We are recognized now and gaining in stature. A number of factors are converging to make our perspectives and our work more important each year. But to reach our full potential, we must rise to the occasion. We must offer our services to the broader field of education, to government, and to private industry. Then we must deliver high quality work in a timely way. The opportunity to become involved in policy decisions is also there. But larger policy decisions involve more than a knowledge of language testing. One must demonstrate sensitivity to the political, economic, and contextual factors surrounding tests, test use, and test-related policies. And, one must communicate beyond the language testing community.