47 Moshe Kol St., Apt. 8, Jerusalem, Israel 93715

CURRICULUM VITAE

Ruth M. Fortus

47 Moshe Kol St., Apt. 8, Jerusalem, Israel 93715

tel (work): 972-2-6759562 ; tel (cell): 972-52-8375714

fax: 972-2-6759543 ; e-mail:

October15, 2011

Employment

1997 – presentDirector of Test Development, National Institute for Testing and Evaluation (NITE). Duties include supervising the development and production of all tests created in this department: the Inter-University Psychometric Entrance Test (PET) and its translated versions (Arabic, Russian, French, Spanish and the Combined version), used by universities and colleges in Israel as part of the admissions process; a Hebrew proficiency test; an English as a foreign language placement test; a test for admissions to a two-year program of university preparatory studies; special-needs tests; and a high-level Mathematics test. Responsibility for 34 staff members and 70 freelance workers.

1991-1997Head, English Section, NITE. Duties included supervising the production of all English tests throughout the various stages involved; editing English material; training and supervising two staff members and twelve freelance editors; and conducting research related to the English items.

1990-1991 Member of English Section, NITE. Involved in the production of the English section of PET.

1989-1990Assistant Front Office Manager, Ramada Renaissance Hotel,

Jerusalem.

1988-1989 Assistant Banquet Manager, Ramada Renaissance Hotel, Jerusalem.

1987-1988 Front Office Manager, Eilon Tower Hotel, Jerusalem.

1987 Head of Reservations Department, KingDavidHotel, Jerusalem

1983-1987 Reservations Manager, King Solomon (Sheraton) Hotel, Jerusalem.

1981-1983 Internship as clinical psychologist, Ezrat Nashim Mental Health Clinic (North), Jerusalem, Israel. Training as clinical psychologist in the children's section. Duties included test administration, therapy for children and/or their parents, and research.

1978-1982 Research assistant, Psychology Department, HebrewUniversity, Jerusalem Assisted Prof. Benny Shanon.

Education

2008 PhD from the School of Education, TelAvivUniversity,

Israel. Dissertation title: "The effect of modality and language on text comprehension".

1995M.A. in Psychology (magna cum laude), HebrewUniversity, Jerusalem, Israel

M.A. Thesis: "Semantic relations in the acquisition of language: An analysis of one child's first word combinations".

1980B.A. in Psychology, HebrewUniversity, Jerusalem, Israel

Publications

Fortus, R., Coriat, R., & Fund, S. (1998). Prediction of item difficulty in the English section of the Israeli Psychometric Entrance Test. In Kunnan, A.J. (Ed). Validation in Language Assessment. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Fortus, R. (2010). Quality control in test development. Examinations Research, 6 (4), p. 64-79. [published in Chinese]

Technical reports

Fortus, R. (1998). Editing the English Section of PET: How much is enough? Technical Report #81, National Institute of Testing and Evaluation.

Professional Affiliations

Member of the Israeli Psychometric Association (EFI)

Member of the International Language Testing Association (ILTA)

Member of the American Educational Research Association (AERA)

Member of the National Council for Measurement in Education (NCME)

Languages

English: mother tongue. Hebrew: extremely proficient. Dutch: fluent. Spanish and French: basic level