Thiagi and ISPI

Sivasailam "Thiagi" Thiagarajan considers ISPI to be his professional home.

In return, ISPI has found various ways to recognize and reward Thiagi.

Thiagi's association with ISPI began in 1964 when, as a high-school teacher in Madras, India, he started writing programmed instructional materials. Later, he adopted the same strategy for designing materials for use by family-planning workers. Susan Markle, NSPI president at that time, praised Thiagi's innovative approaches to group-based programmed materials and nonverbal programmed materials.

In 1966, while conducting training programs in India, Douglas Ellson discovered Thiagi and invited him to be his graduate assistant at Indiana University's Programmed Teaching Project.

In 1968, Thiagi was discouraged by one of his professors from submitting a proposal for the NSPI conference. Frightened by reports of how tough it is to get a proposal accepted, Thiagi hedged his bets by submitting three different proposals. Much to his surprise (and his professor's irritation) all three were accepted, launching Thiagi as a regular presenter at ISPI conferences.

Since 1968, Thiagi missed only one NSPI/ISPI conference. He currently holds the "record" for most concurrent session presentations, most Encore presentations, most preconference workshops, most Masters Series presentations, most keynote presentations, and most crowded cracker barrel sessions.

As the NSPI vice president, Thiagi has organized one of the conferences. As a special Track Chair when Diane Dormant was the vice president, Thiagi created several experimental forum formats, including the 99 Seconds presentations.

Thiagi has been elected the vice president and president of NSPI/ISPI. As an officer of NSPI, Thiagi had the privilege of conversing with and learning from such pioneers as B. F. Skinner, Tom Gilbert, Bob Mager, and Joe Harless.

Thiagi guest-edited an early issue of NSPI's quarterly journal, Improving Human Performance. Later, he served as the editor of NSPI Journal and ISPI's Performance & Instruction for more than 10 years, until he was fired.

ISPI has presented several awards to Thiagi for his work in human performance technology. He has received the Outstanding Organization Award (as a member of the Programmed Teaching Project), Outstanding Research Award (with Kandaswamy and Stolovitch) for studies in formative evaluation, and Outstanding Member Award. ISPI has also recognized Thiagi with its highest Honorary Life Member Award. In addition, Thiagi has received 17 citations from different presidents of NSPI/ISPI.

Thiagi is one of the first group of professionals to receive ISPI's Certified Performance Technologist (CPT) designation.