Historical Timeline of The Robert S. Hartman Institute

The Years Between 1959 – 1969

1959-1961. Robert S. Hartman developed the value inventory or valumetric instrument the Hartman Value Profile (HVP).

1963. Hartman wrote his autobiographical Freedom to Live: The Robert Hartman Story.

1966. The Philoso­phy Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville appointed John W. Davis as Head of Philosophy. He hires Rem B. Edwards and Dwight Vande Vate to help initiate the new Ph.D. program in Philosophy.

1966. Miller Associates was incorporated to market one of the earliest applications of the HVP.

1967. Hartman's, The Structure of Value: Foundations of Scientific Axiology published.

1968. Hartman appointed Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

1968 -1973. Future RSHI Founders and early adopters of the Hartman Value Profile first meet Hartman and begin studying with him: Dave Mefford, Wayne Carpenter, Kurt Kaltreider, Richard C. Leggett, Mark A. Moore, Rem B. Edwards, Gary Acquaviva, Art Ellis, Bill Curley, John Austin, Steve Byrum, and Richard Clarke.

1968. Dave Mefford became Hartman’s Teaching Assistant in Modern Philosophy.

1969. Hartman conducts off-campus HVP classes using his early Manual of Interpretation. Certifies David Mefford, Gary Acquaviva, Art Ellis, and Bill Curley as trained and qualified to interpret the HVP.

1969. Gary Acquaviva became Hartman’s graduate Teaching Assistant.

1969. Hartman authorized educational psychologist John Austin’s company Research Concepts to market HVP.

1969. Billie Elliott’s dissertation, Item Homogeneity and Factorial Invariance for Normative and Ipsative Constructs to the Hartman Value Inventory changed the way Hartman and Mefford thought about the HVP and lead Hartman to write the HVP Research Version.

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The Years Between 1970 – 1979

1970. Hartman and Richard Clarke formed The Axiometric Testing Service (ATS), to market HVP. Professor Clarke later became a charter member of the RSHI. Arthur Ellis and Richard Clarke collaborate at ATS in the early marketing of the HVP.

1970. Hartman submits a memo to the National Institute of Mental Health suggested that the Hartman Value Profile could be used as a predictor of violent behavior and useful as a screening test.

1970. Gary Acquaviva completed his M.A. in Philosophy. His Master's Thesis at the University of Tennessee, Reciprocity Between Individuals, was directed by Hart­man.

1970. Wayne Carpenter was drafted and assigned to a support unit in psychological research for the Army studying and building a more rational approach to decision making. He integrated HVP into his models.

1971-73. Evert Schildt began to work on his own version of the HVP, first referred to as the "HSVP" (Hartman-Schildt Value Profile), later called the Pro Valuator, which employed a different set of linguistic proxies for the underlying value-logic hierarchy.

1972. John W. Davis published Value and Valuation: Axiological Studies in Honor of Robert S. Hartman, University of Tennessee Press.

1973. Steve Byrum, who studied under Hartman at UT, published his Master's Thesis entitled The Value Structure of Theology,  inspired by Hartman.

1973. Ricardo Ortiz Certuche, Gabriel Camporredondo, and Jorge Palafox, under Hartman's supervision, completed a study titled Axioadministration applying formal axiology to explain administrative styles. The HVP was used to compare several kinds of public and private administrative organizations in Mexico.

1973. Rem B. Edwards published "The Value of Man in the Hartman Value Sys­tem," in The Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. 7, 1973, 141-147. This was highly critical of Hartman's "Proofs" for the "Infinite Value of Man." Hartman read this and replied to it before his death, and his reply was incorporated into Formal Axiol­ogy and Its Critics, published in 1995.

1973. Hartman nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize

September 20, 1973. Hartman dies at his home in Cuernavaca, Mexico

Review More About Hartman's Life and Legacy

1973. John W. Davis published the Memorial Minutes for "Robert S. Hartman, 1910-1973" in the Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. XLLVII, 218-219.

1973. John Austin’s Research Concepts publishes The Hartman Value Profile: Manual of Interpretation

1974. John W. Davis, David Mefford, and Vera Mefford were invited by Rita Hartman to sort through Hartman’s library. John W. Davis had established a "Hartman Research Library" in the Special Collections Library at the University of Tennessee.

1975. Gary Acquaviva hired to teach philosophy at Walters State Community College, in Morristown, Tennessee and began researching ways to interpret the Hartman Value Profile more efficiently.

1975. Steve Byrum completes his Ph.D. at University of Tennessee. The title of his doctoral dissertation was Intrinsic Value and Play, which applied Hartman's axiology to that topic. He develops a consulting firm aimed at business activities using organizational applications of the Hart­man Value Profile.

1975. Rita Hartman met David and Vera Mefford and discussed starting a research institute to continue Hartman's work in formal axiology.

1976. David Mefford joins John W. Davis at the University of Tennessee as a graduate Teaching Assistant in the Philosophy Department.

1976. The Robert S. Hartman Institute for Formal and Applied Axiology was founded. The organizers and founders were John W. Davis, David Mefford, and Linda Laws. According to Rita Hartman's wishes, it was established as a non-profit research organization.

1977. The First Annual Conference of the RSHI was held. Frank Forrest, John Davis, Mark A. Moore, Rita Hartman, Barry McConnell. Robert Carter, Kurt Kaltreider, Richard Clarke, Art and Charlotte Ellis, Steve Byrum, John and Joyce Austin, Bill Curly, David and Vera Mefford, Rem B. Ed­wards, Rolf Krojanker, Henry Gardner, as well as many students and professors from the philosophy department in attendance. David Mefford served as the program coordinator. The first Board was elected. It was agreed that an Annual Confer­ence would be held in the fall of each year.

1977. John W. Davis elected the first President of the RSHI.

1977-1980. Hosie Martin and Nicholas Skinner form Axionics, designed to create and market business applications of HVP, and hire several members if RSHI. Axionics was unsuccessful.

1977. John W. Davis and David Mefford collaborated in processing HVPs for the UT football program under coach Johnny Majors using the first computer program to process the HVP, written by the UT computer center. Information from the HVP proved very valuable to the football team, especially those players who were accident or injury-prone. Davis also administered the HVP to the Dallas Cowboys under Coach Tom Landry. He published his findings in the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, Vol XVII, 1990, under the title "Measuring Athletic Goodness: Formal Axiology Applied to Football."

1978 Evert Schildt presents his ProValuator version of the HVP.

1979 Axiometrics, Inc. established

1979 Rem B. Edwards publishes an article highly critical of Hartman titled "Intrinsic and Extrinsic Value and Valuation," in The Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. 13, 133-143

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The Years Between 1980 – 1989

1982. Gary Acquaviva copyrights the first computerized written analysis, based on Robert S. Hartman's Value Theory.

1982. Leon Pomeroy and John W. Davis publish research findings supporting Hartman’s Value Theory in The Journal of the Cattell Institute for Personality Testing, Urbana, Illinois. Subsequently, Pomeroy presents findings to RSHI annual conferences.

1982. David and Vera Mefford form Value Measurement Technologies, and begin successfully marketing the Personal, Sales, and Manage­ment profiles and reference manuals that they had developed at Axiometrics.

1982. Bud Martin and Wayne Carpenter orga­nized Value, Inc., and Carpenter forms his research company the Value Resource Group. Bud Martin develops the first computerized analysis.

1983. The Meffords copyright their own Manual of HVP Interpretation.

1984. Mark A. Moore conducts the first international axiology training on the Provaluator in Sweden

1985. RSHI Annual Meeting held in Cuernavaca, Mexico at Hartman’s home and hosted by Rita. Attended by several members from the US  with Mexican colleagues.

1986. Validation studies of the HVP and Sales competencies developed by Wayne Carpenter were done with Dollar General Corporation with their Organizational Psychologist.  This included construct validity, face validity, and statistical significance. 

1987. Rem B. Edwards elected to RSHI Board of Directors

1988. Dollar General continued research for the criterion validity of Sales competencies and EEOC validity regarding age and sex.  GTE vetted the instrument for Sales competencies legally as well.

1988. Wayne Carpenter, assisted by Leon Pomeroy, conducted the first HVP certification training for consultants.

1988-1995. K. T. Connor inspired the development of two key products, "Managing Innovation Analysis" and the "Sixteen Styles" model, which made possible the inclusion of "Unconventional Thinking" as a key definitive measure.  These were developed by Wayne Carpenter and Value Resource Group

1989. Mark A. Moore was elected President of the RSHI1986

1989. In September, Rem B. Edwards was elected Secretary/Treasurer of the RSHI and began actively to collect royalties from users of the Hartman Value Profile.

1989. According to the Minutes of the September Board meeting, "Edwards sug­gested that the members of the Institute adopt the joint undertaking of writing a book that could be used to teach the theory and applications of formal axiology to others…”

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The Years Between 1990 – 1999

1991. Edwards and John W. Davis edited, wrote for, and publish Forms of Value and Valuation: Theory and Applications through University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland. Many members of the Institute contributed essays to this volume and worked on their contributions for a year or more prior to publication.

1992. Rem B. Edwards became the editor of the Hartman Institute Axiology Studies sub-series of Rodopi's Value Inquiry Book Series. All of the books to follow pub­lished by Rodopi belong within this series and were heavily edited by Edwards. The RSHI resolved to sponsor this book series and redouble its efforts to share evolving axiological science with the wider world.

1994. All Hartman’s works rights assigned to the Institute.

1994. Rita Hartman dies.

1994. Rem B. Edwards arranged with Rodopi to publish Hartman's Freedom to Live: The Robert Hartman Story, edited by Art Ellis.

1994. Frank G. Forrest's Valuemetrics: The Science of Personal and Professional Ethics was published by Rodopi.

1995. Rem B. Edwards edited, partly wrote, and published Formal Axiology and Its Critics through Rodopi.

1996. Using panel of psychometricians from Yale, Harvard and Princeton, Wayne Carpenter and Leon Pomeroy assisted Ann Mueller, Arthur Andersen psychometrician, to validate axiological culture analysis. 

1998 Arthur Ellis was elected to a one year term as President of the RSHI.

1999 RSHI establishes website www.hartmaninstitute.org.

1999 Gary Acquaviva published his Values, Violence, and Our Future through Rodopi.

1999 Leon Pomeroy was elected as the President of RSHI.

1999 Wayne Carpenter headed up an evaluation study to confirm that the HVP is statistically valid.

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The Years Between 2000 – 2009

2000 Gary Acquaviva published his Violence, Values, and Our Future through Rodopi.

2000 Rem B. Edwards published his Religious Values and Valuations through Paidia Publishing Co., Chattanooga, Tenn.

2001  2nd International Congress of Formal Axiology held at the Autonomous University of Mexico at Toluca, Mexico, Oct. 4-6. 

2001 Thomas M. Dicken and Rem B. Edwards publish Dialogues on Values and Centers of Value through Rodopi.

2002 Robert S. Hartman's The Knowledge of Good, Critique of Axiological Reason, edited by Arthur R. Ellis and Rem B. Edwards, published by Rodopi.

2002 Darlene and Lynn Clark joined the Robert S. Hartman Institute when Darlene started Value Partners Consulting. With Steve Byrum, they created a HVP Brochure, which included information about Hartman and several critical success indicators.

2002 Wayne Carpenter formed Axiometrics International with Bob Terrell.

2003 Steve Healy conducts HVP validation testing for Axiometrics International.

2003 Robert K. Smith was elected to and began to serve on the Board of the Hartman Institute

2004 K.T. Connor and Jay Niblick were elected to the Hartman Institute Board of Directors and attended at that time. Marcos Gojman was elected as Representative of Mexico and Spain.  

2005 Rem B. Edwards published "Robert S. Hartman," in the Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, London - New York, Thoemmes/Continuum.

2005 The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, in partnership with Steve Byrum and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennessee, completed validation of the HVP

2005. Leon Pomeroy published The New Science of Axiological Psychology through Rodopi. Pomeroy unequivocally established the validity of the Hartman Value Profile (HVP). His empirical data effectively began to transform Hartman's formal science of value into an empirical science of value.

2005. David and Vera Mefford filed a copyright for their 800-page manual titled Axiology: Theory and Practice.

2005. Steve Byrum elected as the President of the RSHI for the next three years. Wayne Carpenter, Darlene Clark, and Ron Oltmanns were elected to the Board beginning the next year.

2006. The first meeting of Robert K. Smith's Academy of Value Sciences was held in Dallas, Texas.

2006. The RSHI published a Second Edition of Robert S. Hartman's, The Hartman Value Profile (HVP) Manual of Interpretation with a new Preface by Leon Pomeroy and a new Table of Contents and Index prepared by Rem B. Edwards

2006. Steve Byrum and Darlene and Lynn Clark developed a new internet HVP database.

2006. The Board established the Spanish-speaking Iberoamerican Branch of the Robert S. Hartman Institute. Marcos Gojman was elected as President, and Gilberto Carrasco was elected as Vice President.  Both became members of the Board of Directors.

2007. John W. Davis died on March 5.

2007. Darlene Clark began using Hartman's Pictorial HVP to help level the employ­ment field for individuals with disabilities.

2008. The first issue of The Journal of Formal Axiology: Theory and Practice was published, edited by Rem B. Edwards and Vera Mefford.

2008. The Iberian Branch of the Hartman Institute is established and celebrated at a conference this year.  Marcos Gojman is President of the branch.  Several RSHI presenters from the US joined the Mexican presenters at the conference in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

2009. Gary Gallopin published Beyond Perestroika: Axiology and the New Russian Entrepreneurs through Rodopi

2009. Cliff Hurst elected to the Board of Directors.

2009. Axiometrics International reevaluated the HVP using matrix algebra diad and triad analysis of value dimensions for HVP1 and HVP2.

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The Years Between 2010 – 2019

2010 The Meffords established AXCES, an axiology company dedicated to develop­ing an expanded diagnostic system, axiology version 3.0, employing parallel forms of the HVP. They also obtain the copyright to 50 Easy Pieces, a compendium of 50 targeted HVP parallel versions, both profiles, and indexes, which they continue to expand today. 

2011 K. T. (Kate) Connor elected President of the RSHI

2011 Leon Pomeroy invited to Blog for Psychology Today magazine

2011 Axiologist Mario Cardenas Trigos died on December 10th.

2011 Ulrich Vogel was elected to the Board of Directors, with the intent to build a European branch of the Institute.

2012 Cliff Hurst becomes a Co-Editor for the Journal of Formal Axiology: Theory and Practice, joining Rem B. Edwards and Vera Mefford.

2012 The RSHI republished Robert S. Hartman, The Structure of Value: Founda­tions of Scientific Axiology through WIPF & STOCK, Eugene, Oregon. This project was executed by Rem B. Edwards.

2013 Second Edition of Freedom to Live, The Robert Hartman Story, Wipf & Stock

2013 Adina Borta and Pam Brooks are elected to the Board of Directors. Allan Miller from Scotland is elected as President of the European branch.

2014 Board of Director positions are redesigned as 3 years terms with one additional term and then absence from the board.  Later renewals are possible.

2014 A Wisdom Council is created to be formed of those who have been with the Institute for several years and who will be ongoing resources for the Institute to further the work of Hartman and give feedback to the Board.  Their representative will be a voting member of the board.

2014  RSHI-EU met in Munich, Germany.  Art Ellis and K.T. Connor attended from RSHI-Global. 

2015 External bookkeeper hired in Tennessee and Institute address is changed to her address.

2016  RSHI – EU met in Berlin, Germany.  Art Ellis and K.T. Connor attended from RSHI-Global.

2016  Doug Lawrence and Jay Morris are elected as members of the Board of Directors.

2017 Cliff Hurst takes over as Editor of the Journal.

2017 Rick Bowers and Robert Calabrese are elected to the Board of Directors.   Andrea Burns from the UK agrees to be the EU contact for 2 years as the EU chapter board dissolves.

2018 Jennifer Rowley from Europe are elected to the Board of Directors.

2019 Suzie Price elected to the Board of Directors.

2019 Published: Five Lectures on Formal Axiology.

2019 Steve Healy repeats validation testing for HVP.  Finds even tighter Standard Deviations.  

2019 Marit Hoppner, from Germany, and Catherine Blakemore is elected to the Board of Directors for the US, Leonardo Gomez-Navas from Mexico.

2019 Board VP’s Suzie Price and Doug Lawrence, with Rick Bowers assistance as well, work to build a brand new Institute website that is independent of all other sites. Frequently board member businesses had contributed to supporting the site.  The new site reduced registration difficulty and enhanced both payment systems and site appearance.

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The Years Between 2020 – Current