Kansas State University, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1996

Middle East Technical University, Clinical Psychology, 1988

Middle East Technical University, Psychology, 1985

Development and validation of personnel selection tests, techniques and methods; personality assessment; performance management and culture; workplace mistreatment; leadership from a gender perspective.

H. Canan Sümer graduated from Middle East Technical University in 1980 with a B.S. Degree in psychology and received her Master’s Degree in clinical psychology from the same university in 1988.  She received her Master’s degree from University of New Haven in 1991 and her Ph.D. from Kansas State University in 1996 in the area of industrial and organizational psychology. Between 1996 and 2019 she worked as a faculty member in the Department of Psychology, Middle East Technical University and served as the chair of the Department from 2017 to 2019.  Her research interests include development of personnel selection tests and techniques, personality assessment, performance management and culture, workplace mistreatment, and leadership and gender issues at work. Dr. Sümer is on the editorial board of a number of national and international journals in her field. She is a member of the Turkish Psychological Association and Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and has represented Turkey in EFPA’s Assessment Board.  She has led a number of large scale projects on military personnel selection and performance management, and was an active member of NATO- HFM Panel’s Task Group on Military Recruitment and Retention. More recently she was involved in a project sponsored by the Scientific and Technological Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) in which a computerized selection system along with an assessment center was developed to be used in the selection of blue-collar and white-collar employees. She is among the inventors of five national and two international patented inventions that came out of this project. Dr. Sümer has national and international publications on personnel selection, personality assessment, performance management, military retention, and gender role stereotypes topics, and she is actively involved in the training of human resource management practitioners.