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Remembering Testing Pioneer Al Hieronymus 
The following remembrance of Albert Nathan Hieronymus (MA ‘46/PhD ’48) is by Professor Emeritus H. D. Hoover, who was first a student and then a colleague of Professor Hieronymus. Hieronymus, 89, died peacefully at his home September 3, 2007.

E.F. Lindquist (L) and Al Hieronymus examine the newly published Iowa Test form, 1964.
E.F. Lindquist (L) and Al Hieronymus examine the newly published Iowa Test form, 1964.

In the fall of 1964, I became a graduate research assistant to Al Hieronymus, professor of Educational Psychology and director of the Iowa Basic Skills Testing Program. Due to a shortage of office space for graduate students, I was assigned a spot in Al’s office. Our desks were shoved right up against each other, and I spent the next year literally face-to-face with the most amazing person I have ever known. I learned more sitting at that desk, watching and listening to Al, than I have learned at any other time in my life.

What I observed is eloquently expressed by Leonard Feldt, one of Al’s students, who went on to become the senior author of the Iowa Tests of Educational Development, the first author of the ACT, and director of the Iowa Testing Programs.

“It is not uncommon for a Ph.D. candidate to hold his advisor as a role model when he begins his academic career,” Feldt said. “Though Al was my advisor, I could not adopt him as my model. He was deeply involved in so many projects simultaneously—development or revision of the ITBS (Iowa Tests of Basic Skills) and several other major tests, item tryout for future editions of the ITBS, direction of the annual testing program in Iowa, serving as a confidant to E.F. Lindquist on problems relating to the test scoring equipment, advisor to hundreds of undergraduates and many graduate students, teaching both undergraduate classes and graduate seminars, directing doctoral dissertations. How could a new Ph.D. dream of emulating a man of such prodigious talents and productivity?”

Al never closed the door to hisoffice, and I never saw him turn away a student wanting to see him. He had endless patience with undergraduates but expected and demanded a great deal from graduate students and other faculty. When his children stopped at his office on their way home from school, he would give them his full attention—as well as money for treats.

Al’s phone number was included on all communications to the hundreds of public and private schools participating in Iowa’s testing program, and hereceived manycalls every day. He always answered his own phone, patiently responding to questions from school administrators, teachers, parents,and the press. One of my most vivid memories is of the day Al wasto discuss two journal articles at a faculty seminar. Thirty minutes before the meeting, he had yet to read either because of numerous student drop-ins and calls from schools. He gave me one of the articles and asked me to read it aloud. He simultaneously read the other, taking notes on both and only occasionally asking me to repeat a sentence.

Al worked closely with E.F. Lindquist, the founder of the Iowa Tests, to develop the optical scanner that revolutionized test scoring and helped to make Iowa City a world-renowned center for educational testing. In the late 1950s, he worked with Lindquist, James Van Allen, and others on the design and assembly of the campus’s first computer. Al introduced numerous innovations in test design and score reporting, and under his leadership, the ITBS grew from a test battery created for use primarily in Iowa to one marketed by a major publisher and taken by millions of students worldwide.The manuals he created to accompany the ITBS reflected his day-to-day involvement with the schools. Al’s manuals and their successors present such clear models for the proper use of tests and are so well respectedthat they are often used in university courses in educational measurement. As Leonard Feldt recently remarked, “If Lindquist is to be remembered as the CEO of the testing empire that grew out of the Iowa Tests, then Al should be considered the Chief Operating Officer.” In 1991 the National Council on Measurement in Education honored Al with their Career Contributions to Educational Measurement award.

Al distinguished himself outside the field of education as well. During World War II, he served as a radar officer in a battalion that landed on Omaha Beach seven days after D-Day. He received a Bronze Star for his efforts to keep guns firing during the campaign that liberated the port of Cherbourg in late June 1944. He traveled by jeep to the five positions of the 115 th Artillery Gun Battalion and made sure the radar and aircraft identification systems were working properly. Later in the war, he was promoted to captain and made commanding officer of a battalion. He traveled across Europe after D-Day with the Fourth Armored Division under General George Patton’s command. When Al received the prestigious Croix de Guerre from Charles de Gaulle, General Patton was there to congratulate him and shake his hand.

The war had interrupted an earlier career in education. Before the war, Al had taught high school music, shop, science, math, and physical education in Opdike, Illinois, after graduatingfrom Illinois State University. His future wife Wilfreda (Freda) was the commerce and English teacher in Opdike. After the war, Al and Freda moved to Iowa City where Al received his master’s degree and Ph.D. He joined The University of Iowa faculty in 1948 and immediately assumed responsibility for the ITBS and the state testing program.

Al was more than apioneering figure in educational measurement and a war hero. He had a number of other passions. Al was a talented, self-taught musician who worked his way through college as a pianist. He continued to play, both for his own pleasure and as part of a jazz group composed of fellow UI professors. The group often performedat University functions and at parties at Al and Freda’s home.

Sports were another of Al’s interests, and he especially enjoyed following all Hawkeye teams and his beloved Chicago Cubs. I joined Al’s large family and numerous friends every year at his home to watch the baseball playoffs and World Series. It was also a tradition for more than forty years to gather at Al and Freda’s home on New Year’s Day to watch football from morning until midnight and to eat one of Freda’s fabulous dinners.

Al was a gardener of unsurpassed enthusiasm. The several-acre area around the Hieronymus home was a veritable arboretum, containing trees and plants found nowhere else in Iowa. After his retirement, Al spent much time working in his yard and could often be found down on all fours tending his plants, sometimes with an open can or bottle of beer in the leg pocket of his overalls. How he kept it from spilling no one knows. He and Freda were founding members of Iowa City’s Project GREEN, whose volunteers have planted thousands of trees and shrubs in the city’s public spaces.

Al Hieronymus
Al Hieronymus, testing pioneer
(1917-2007)

Of Al’s many intense interests, his deepest devotion was reserved for his family. Al and Freda were married for 63years. Freda, who died in 2005, was a well-known businesswoman. They are survived by their five children, seventeen grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.

Memorial contributions can be made to the Blommers, Hieronymus, and Feldt Scholarship for graduate students in educational measurement or the Holden Cancer Center, both through The University of Iowa Foundation, or to Project GREEN in Iowa City.

 

 

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