Greetings from Chicago.  As Chair of the HR Division, I’d like to tell you about some of our new initiatives as well as provide a recap of the 2008 AOM meeting in Anaheim.  Before doing so, I want to thank John Hollenbeck (Michigan State), who has served as the HR Division Chair for the past year.  John has been a wonderful leader—accomplishing a great deal in a short period of time and making it fun along the way.A priority for the HR Division for the coming year is to increase involvement of our members.

Our membership growth has occurred in two areas:  doctoral students and international members.  In order to involve our doctoral student members, we will be forming a doctoral student committee.  This committee will develop some events for the 2009 AOM meeting for doctoral students who are in the first or second year of their program.  This will compliment the doctoral consortium, which is targeted for more senior students.  In terms of reaching out to our international members, John Hollenbeck (Michigan State) has created the HR Ambassadors committee. 

This committee consists of HR division members from 42 different countries and will create a stronger connection with our international members.  The HR Division’s program at the 2008 AOM meeting was filled with great sessions, workshops, and networking events.   There’s not enough space to recognize all of the Division members who helped to make the AOM meeting a success but there are two individuals who were essential.  John Delery (University of Arkansas) served as the Professional Development Workshop Chair and Howard Klein (Ohio State University) served as our Program Chair.  Thanks to John and Howard for all of their efforts in creating a great AOM meeting for the HR Division.  I am fortunate to work with 18 individuals who were elected by our members to serve as officers of the division.  Four of these individuals recently completed their three year term and deserve a big thank you.  Thanks to David Allen (University of Mississippi), Maria Kraimer (University of Iowa), Paul Sparrow (Lancaster University), and Kelly Zellars (University of North Carolina, Charlotte) for serving the HR division so well during the past three years. 

The awards committee, co-chaired by Wendy Boswell (Texas A&M University) and Theresa Glomb (University of Minnesota) involved over 80 division members in selecting our 2008 award winners.  We would like to recognize and congratulate the 2008 award winners: Herbert Heneman Jr. Career Achievement Award: Susan E. Jackson, Rutgers University Thomas A. Mahoney Mentoring Award: Gary P. Latham, University of Toronto Distinguished HR Executive Award: Anthony (Tony) J. Rucci, The Ohio State University Early Career Achievement Award: Bradford S. Bell, Cornell University Scholarly Achievement Award:  Mo Wang, Portland State University International HRM Scholarly Achievement Award:  Barry Gerhart, University of Wisconsin & Meiyu Fang, National Central University of Taiwan Ralph Alexander Dissertation Award:  Anuradha Ramesh, Personnel Decisions International Best Convention Paper:  Sven Kepes, Virginia Commonwealth University Best Student Convention Paper:  Ruolian Fang, University of Minnesota SHRM Foundation Dissertation Grants:  Sara Colakoglu, Rutgers University; Jennifer Nahrgang, Michigan State University; Prajya Vidyarthi, University of Illinois at Chicago; Yingchun (Irene) Wang, University of Minnesota Last, but not least, if you are interested in being more involved in the HR Division or If you have any suggestions, please send me an e-mail ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ).   Sandy J. Wayne HR Division Chair University of Illinois at Chicago