Professor emeritus to give 2003-2004 Leibowitz Lecture on work in the 21st Century

Professor emeritus to give 2003-2004 Leibowitz Lecture on work in the 21st Century

University Park, Pa. --- Frank Landy, Penn State professor emeritus of psychology, will deliver the 2003-2004 Herschel W. and Eileen Wirtshafter Leibowitz Lecture in Psychology on Wednesday, Jan. 28 at 7:30 p.m., in the Nittany Lion Inn Ballroom on Penn State’s University Park campus.

His talk, “Work in the 21st Century: It's Not Your Father's Oldsmobile,” will focus on how today's workplace has undergone a rapid and radical transformation. As recently as 20 years ago, work was largely performed by single contributors, it was stable in content and context, only moderately technological, and most of the people you worked with were demographically similar to you. Today, at least some parts of almost all jobs are done by teams, downsizing looms over everyone's shoulder, work is dominated by technology, and there may be as many as four first languages spoken in a worker's immediate environment. Landy will discuss the changes in the nature of work and modifications that will need to be made by applied psychologists if they hope to remain relevant.

Landy was a faculty member at Penn State for 26 years and also served as director of the Center for Applied Behavioral Sciences at Penn State from 1990 through 1994, when he retired from the University as a professor emeritus and devoted his attention to consulting on a full-time basis. Currently, as chief executive officer of SHL Litigation Support Services, he is active in the area of employment discrimination and human factors litigation. He has testified in over 80 federal and state cases on issues as diverse as race discrimination, product liability, warning signs and labels, and disability.

The Herschel W. and Eileen Wirtshafter Leibowitz Lecture in Psychology is supported by an endowment established by Herschel W. and Eileen Wirtshafter Leibowitz of State College. The couple was honored as the 2003 Renaissance Man and Woman of the Year at the 27th annual Renaissance Scholarship Fund dinner. She has been active in many local cultural, political, and service activities. He is the Evan Pugh professor emeritus of psychology and internationally renowned expert on human vision and perception, and the causes and mitigation of human error.