Kenworthy receives endowed professorship in I/O psychology

Tuesday, Apr 16, 2024 • Greg Pederson :

The University of Texas at Arlington Department of Psychology recently named a new endowed professor, strengthening its already robust program in industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology.

Jared Kenworthy, a longtime member of the department, was named the Lewis Hollweg Endowed Professor of Industrial & Organizational Psychology. The professorship was established through a gift from Lewis Hollweg, who has a longtime relationship with the department through the business he co-founded, Batrus Hollweg International.

“I’m honored to receive this endowed position, made possible by the generosity of Lewis Hollweg,” Kenworthy said. “Dr. Hollweg has been a great friend of the department for many years and he has done so much to help to build the I/O program at UTA. I look forward to using this position to try to strengthen and enhance our efforts in I/O research and education.”

Hollweg said he is delighted to be able to help further the department’s academic mission and provide support for the I/O program in particular.

“I absolutely love psychology and I’m very happy the professorship has become a reality,” Hollweg said. “I have had a great working relationship with the I/O program at UTA through my business and I look forward to seeing what the students and faculty at UTA will accomplish in the future.”

The College’s I/O psychology program dates to 2000, and in 2012 the Industrial and Organizational Psychology Center (now the Insights for Organizations Center) was created to promote the field, build collaborative relationships, and encourage continuous learning. Students in the department’s I/O master’s program have benefitted greatly from the ability to work as interns in Dallas/Fort Worth area companies, including the one formerly owned by Hollweg.

Kenworthy, who came to UTA in 2005, has worked in social psychology for two decades and much of his research relates directly to I/O psychology’s focus on human behavior in organizations and the workplace.

“I’ve been working with my I/O colleagues for years, ever since I started at UTA,” Kenworthy said. “My research areas are reducing prejudice and discrimination; and creativity in groups and teams. Both of these areas have obvious applications to organizational science and workplace dynamics in general. There is quite a lot of overlap between social psychology and I/O psychology.”

His research lab at UTA deals with group processes, including intergroup bias, conflict and threat; intergroup contact; consensus estimation and social projection; and crossed and multiple categorizations. With longtime collaborator and College of Science dean emeritus Paul Paulus, he has done extensive research on the creation of ideas by groups in the workplace.

Kenworthy has co-authored three books and numerous book chapters with Paulus. Their most recent book, published in 2022, is titled "Creativity and Innovation: Cognitive, Social, and Computational Approaches." It focuses on the emergence of creative ideas from cognitive and social dynamics and how brain, human, social and other networks lead to innovation.

Kenworthy’s current project, funded by the U.S. Army Research Office, is a partnership between psychology and computer science. He is working with computer scientists who are building a system that can analyze text in real time as groups are engaged in brainstorming, and provide them feedback about the relevance and novelty of their ideas.

“The idea is to help groups overcome some typical group problems and to promote the survival of really good ideas from the brainstorming phase into the innovation and implementation phases of the process,” Kenworthy said.

Kenworthy was born in Santa Rosa, California, and became interested in psychology as a possible career in high school. He received a B.S. in Psychology from Brigham Young University in 1996 and went on to graduate school at the University of Southern California. He earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from USC, both in social psychology, in 1998 and 2002, respectively.

After finishing his doctoral degree, he spent three years in England as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. His research focus at Oxford was the development of trust between the Catholic and Protestant communities of Northern Ireland after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which largely ended decades of conflict and violence between the groups.

Hollweg was born in Dallas and took an early interest in psychology, fostered mostly through voracious reading of whatever books on the subject he could find.

“There were no psychology classes in public school when I was a kid, but I was interested in it and would read any book I could get my hands on,” Hollweg said. “I went to Austin College after I graduated high school and took my first psychology course there, and I went crazy for it. I was fascinated by the whole thing.”

Hollweg transferred to UT Austin and went on to earn a B.A. in Psychology in 1966. He enrolled in the master’s program at Southern Methodist University and received an M.A. in Psychology in 1971. He then began working on a Ph.D. in psychology at Texas Christian University, completing it in 1973. While at TCU he worked as a consultant at a company in Dallas.

“The pay wasn’t very good and I had gotten married, so I left the firm and met a guy who offered to go into business with me,” he said. “That’s when we started our own company, Batrus Hollweg International (BHI).”

BHI, a human resources software and consulting company, specialized in assessing and developing people to improve organizational results. BHI created customized employee selection systems and pioneered cutting-edge assessment software. Hollweg eventually bought out his partner, and the company was soon performing more than one million assessments annually.

Soon after the creation of UTA’s I/O program, Hollweg began hiring I/O students as interns. Some of them were later hired by BHI as full-time employees, including Chloe Lemelle, who is now assistant vice president of Workforce Diversity at AT&T.

“I got involved with UTA because my company had been hiring grad students to work for us and we were getting smart, capable, bright students like Chloe,” Hollweg said. “As interns they learned a lot of different things and some of them went on to work for us for years.”

That led Hollweg to help with the creation of an advisory council for the I/O Center, along with Dale Thompson, founder and CEO of Leadership Worth Following, and Phillip Roark, former CEO of Insala. On the UTA side, the council’s creation was led by Nicolette Hass, professor of practice and director of the I/O Center.

“Lewis has played a huge role in the success of our I/O program and his mentorship has meant so much to so many of our students over the years,” Hass said. “All of us in the department, the College and at UTA cannot thank him enough for his generosity in funding this endowed professorship. This will benefit the I/O program tremendously for many years to come.”

In 2011, Hollweg sold BHI to Kenexa Technology (now a part of IBM). He continued working at BHI for 18 months, then retired. He travels extensively with his wife, Barbara, with whom he is involved in numerous conservation and philanthropic efforts. They serve on the board of Direct Impact Africa and are involved in multiple non-profit projects in Africa and the United States.

Hollweg also works part-time as chief innovation officer for Hollweg Assessment Partners, a company founded by his daughter, Ashley. He is an active member of the American Psychological Association and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. He says he is thrilled to see his name attached in a tangible way to UTA’s I/O program.

“My relationship with UTA has been very beneficial and rewarding,” he said. “I’m really pleased to have my name associated with the Department of Psychology and the I/O program in this way.”

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