History of the Design of Our Career Assessment, Education and Career Planning Systems

The design of the Career Dimensions systems is based on the model created by a team of nationally prominent educators form Columbian University Teachers College and Harvard University Graduate School of Education. The team leader was Professor Donald E. Super of Columbia University Teachers College. The system model was first implemented in the design of the Education & Career Explorations System (ECES) for use by students and the Employee Development Planning System (EDPS) for workers in career transition. The development of these early pioneering systems was sponsored by the IBM Corporation.

The chief architect for these systems was Professor Donald E. Super, of Columbia University Teachers College,then President of the American Psychological Association Division of Counseling Psychology and internationally recognized for his theories and research that culminated in his "Career Life Span & Life Space” theory. Other team members were Professor Roger A. Myers of the Columbia University Teachers College, past president of the American Psychological Association Division of Counseling Psychology and co-developer of the Career Development Inventory, Professor David Tiedeman, then of Harvard University, best know for his theories in career decision making and the development of a pilot system named the "Information System for Vocational Decisions” sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, and Professor David Campbell, then of the University of Minnesota and co-developer of the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory and developer of the Campbell Interest & Skill Inventory. Dr. Frank J. Minor, Senior Psychologist for the IBM Corporation was the overall IBM project director throughout the development and evaluation of these IBM sponsored systems.

Our Career Dimensions systems embody the positive design features and functions of the model designed by Professor Donald E. Super’s team and draws upon the results of current research. David J. Minor,President of Career Dimensions, used this framework to develop the Career Dimensions FOCUS 2 system, the MCP FOCUSGuidance system, and the MyFOCUS system.