On Wednesday, March 21 the 2012 International Awards Ceremony was held where Todd Drummond won the Gill-Chin Lim Award for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation in Global Studies at MSU.

When Todd Drummond, a doctoral candidate in the College of Education, set out to evaluate the technical and policy aspects of university entrance examinations in Kyrgyzstan he also took on substantial changes to his doctoral program so that he could acquire the very technical psychometric expertise need for his research.                                                                              

Drummond’s dissertation focuses on whether the recently developed Kyrgyz university entrance examination is fair to the three different linguistic groups taking the exam. Cross-lingual tests are assessment instruments created in one language and adapted for use with another language group. Practitioners and researchers use cross-lingual tests for various descriptive, analytical and selection purposes, both in comparative studies across nations and within countries marked by linguistic diversity. Due to cultural, contextual, psychological and linguistic differences between diverse populations, adapting test items for use across groups is challenging.

In an age of globalization, we can only expect more tests will be used with different language groups. Drummond special ability to combine the technical understanding of testing with the educational, political and social context is in high demand. His work to analyze and improve adapting test items from Russian in Kyrgyz is already making the university entrance process more equitable in the Kyrgyz Republic.

Drummond’s thesis has much to offer, both to those who seek more general understanding of Kyrgyzstan, and to those who seek to make testing fairer for minority linguistic groups in any country.

From 2001 to 2005 Drummond served as the director of Kyrgyzstan’s National Testing Initiative, a program launched by the President of the Kyrgyz Republic and funded by USAID. The initiative resulted in the development of a non-governmental assessment center and the creation of a new university admissions testing and enrollment regime for State Universities in the Republic.

Drummond holds a BA in history from Indiana University and an MA in political science from the University of Florida.