Every three years there is a change in the leadership of the CAS Admissions Committees. Three years ago, Jeanne Crowell started her tenure as vice president-admissions, I became chairperson of the Candidate Liaison Committee (CLC) and Jason Russ became the chairperson of the Syllabus and Examination Committee (SEC). Now that terms are up, we are welcoming our respective replacements William Wilder, Laura Hemmer and Jim Sandor. Laura Hemmer, who is taking over my role, has prepared by serving as vice chairperson for the past year. She has attended some SEC meetings and learned more detail of how the CLC serves as a voice of the candidates and plans content for the Future Fellows. During my time as CLC chairperson, the CLC also helped share candidate perspective on small and substantial changes to the exams. Hemmer, the candidates and CLC volunteers will continue giving these valuable perspectives to the CAS.

In light of the transition, I decided to interview the outgoing and incoming CAS VP-Admissions to learn more about the major changes Jeanne Crowell has led over the past three years. I also wanted to get some insight into what William Wilder will be doing over the next three years and how he will work with Hemmer and the CLC.

Rachel Hunter: The CAS VP-Admissions has an important role. Can you describe the responsibilities?

Jeanne Crowell: VP-Admissions is one member of the CAS Executive Council. The Executive Council is broadly responsible for executing the strategy defined by the CAS Board. The VP-Admissions manages the aspect of the CAS activities leading to the admission of new members to the CAS, including syllabus and exams. There are two committees overseen by the VP-Admissions: The Candidate Liaison Committee (CLC) and the Syllabus and Exam Committee (SEC). The SEC is the largest CAS committee with over 700 members.

RH: What in your prior background helped prepare you for this role?

JC: First, I have had extensive experience volunteering for the CAS within Admissions committees. When I started volunteering as a new Fellow, it was with the Syllabus Committee. At that time, the Syllabus Committee was separate from the Exam Committee, so I was not involved with writing or grading exam questions. Later, I joined and eventually became chairperson of the Education Policy Committee, which no longer exists. I also became involved in a number of task forces focused on Admissions issues.   

Second, I served a term on the CAS Board of Directors. This is not a prerequisite to being the VP-Admissions, but the experience helped me to understand the Executive Council (EC) and role of the EC in how the CAS Board sets strategy for EC to implement

RH: Could you give us similar insight into your background?

William Wilder: I have been involved in Admissions Committees since becoming an FCAS in 2002. I started as a writer/grader and then ascended through Exam Committee ranks up to being assistant chairperson while Steve Armstrong was the chairperson of the Exam Committee. This allowed me some overlap to ensure continuity with leading the committee after Steve. During my three-year tenure as chairperson, the Syllabus and Exam Committees were merged to form the SEC we have today.

I also served on the CAS Board and was involved in the working group discussing the proposed CAS and SOA combination. As Jeanne mentioned, this background is helpful in understanding how the VP-Admissions is expected to execute on the vision of the board.

Most recently, I started getting involved in activities of the VP-Admissions as soon as it was announced that I would be the next VP-Admissions. This allowed me to listen in and learn about latest things in the admissions space. My approach has been to focus on learning what is going on while respecting existing structure to ensure a smooth transition.

RH: Could you highlight major initiatives you worked on during your time as VP-Admissions?

JC: Immediately upon starting my tenure as VP-Admissions, we announced the plans for rolling out TBE (technology-based exams) with Exam 5. It took full time a commitment to complete the preparations for this change and then, after the sitting, to understand how we could improve in the future. As VP-Admissions, I knew that we needed to move toward computer-based testing (CBT) and we had to decide where to go next. As you know, in 2020 we accelerated our next steps with CBT due to the pandemic.   

Another major examination change announced at the start of my term was the introduction of the MAS (Modern Actuarial Statistics) exams. A lot of time was also spent on the NAIC (National Association of Insurance Commissioners) review of the CAS credentialing process and putting together information demonstrating that our exam process and syllabus met their standards for qualification of actuaries in the U.S. There was also attention given to the potential CAS and SOA combination, which included starting to think about whether that might lead to a change in the credentialing process. While I was not as directly involved as William and others on the board were, I was paying close attention as I knew it could impact our admissions process.

I am very excited to see initial recommendations from the CAS Job Task Analysis being nearly ready to share. This huge undertaking started many years ago and has seen many major pieces completed over the last three years, including surveying the membership and summarizing the learnings. This will help shape the future of our exams and credentialing process with a goal of reflecting skills and knowledge actuaries really need in their day-to-day jobs. Along with that, I have been involved with the Admissions Roadmap, which is well under way. Steve Armstrong has announced that he expects to share more details in the Spring.

RH: Moving written response exams to CBT sooner than planned was a major change for the CAS Exam administration process this fall. What needed to happen to make that possible?

JC: The CAS has massively upped its staff support of admissions recently, including the addition of Jennifer Naughton as chief learning officer and Wesley Griffiths as dedicated admissions actuary (though sadly, Wes has advanced his career further outside of the CAS). The general staff actuary, Ken Williams, has also devoted considerable time to the CBT transition. Adding a professional testing expert and two actuaries made huge differences in how the CAS staff were able to focus on the transition.

The original CBT plan for 2020 was to launch only the multiple-choice MAS exams through Pearson VUE centers in the fall. Adding written response exams meant that we needed to work with another vendor to allow grading of the computer-based written responses. So, the timeline for that process needed to be accelerated, [which] largely fell to CAS staff. [It] was a very big initiative to make sure we’d be ready for fall exam grading. Another major issue was not just that the pandemic caused us to move to CBT, but also that because of the pandemic other organizations were moving to CBT and the Pearson VUE center capacity could be limited in response to local guidelines. This unanticipated supply and demand issue with Person VUE testing locations was a challenge that led to a longer testing window than preferred.   

There have been many other issues to iron out to make it possible. We needed to create sample questions for candidates to familiarize themselves with the Pearson VUE environment and software. We also needed to format all Fall Exam questions to be ready for the Pearson VUE environment. This required many hours from CAS actuaries and volunteers to help in ways that were not anticipated earlier in the year.

Furthermore, we wanted to provide details to candidates as quickly as possible even while many details were not yet finalized. This meant we had to carefully craft and review communications to provide accurate and complete information in a timely fashion to all candidates including through articles and webinars. We had to strike a balance between informing candidates of the change so they could prepare and being unable to provide all details immediately because some details were still being worked out. We used the CLC as a sounding board to make sure our messages were detailed enough and to get feedback about what might be helpful from a candidate perspective.

RH: This fall, the CAS announced a move toward not releasing exams to enable question banking. What benefits might candidates expect to see as the CAS grows its bank of questions?

JC: In my mind, there are many potential benefits that will address some candidate pain points. As the CAS develops a quality bank of exam questions and statistics on those questions, candidates can expect to see:

• More consistent question quality and relevance to learning objectives.
• More consistent and faster grading of exams.
• More appropriate exam length and distribution of question types between sittings.
• Exams offered in windows instead of single day events or offered more frequently.

The decision to move toward item banking will improve future exams, but it also necessitated a lot of other changes to policies and exam administration, including eliminating the Examiner’s Reports and changing the appeals process.

RH: We’ve heard from Jeanne about a lot of changes, including CBT and question banking. What about the future admissions vision is motivating for you?

WW: There is so much great progress happening in admissions and a lot to be excited about. Although not necessarily of our choosing, accelerating the shift to CBT and item banking for all exams is a major step toward a vision that goes back to my days in Exam Committee leadership. Likewise, seeing the Job Task Analysis coming together is super motivating for me and I’m eager to see how it’ll help us keep CAS members the best at what they do. Lastly, I’ll just say that staff have always been critical to the success of the CAS. With so much going on and membership increasing so fast, I’m excited to see the additional investments we’re making in admissions staff and I’m eager to work with them.

RH: The VP of Admissions has two committees, the SEC and the CLC. What is your view of the role of the CLC and how has the CLC helped during your time as VP-Admissions?

JC: I found it helpful to get the perspective of current CAS candidates on proposed changes. Many changes have happened during my time as VP-Admissions, and it has been helpful to get feedback from the CLC on planned changes and how to improve the ways we communicated or implemented the changes.

The CLC also has important role to communicate directly to candidates in ways that resonate with them. Official CAS Admissions communications are official announcements, but CLC communications can share candidate impressions such as how Nate Williams shared his planning to prepare for Exam 5 TBE and his actual experience with it, or articles regarding how to plan for future changes to exams such as strategies around the MAS Exams transition rules. This can be very helpful for candidates who don’t have a large network of other candidates that they work with.

RH: As VP-Admissions, how would you like to see the CLC help support upcoming changes to the exams?

WW: I would like the CLC to continue to provide candid, thoughtful and constructive feedback as they do today. With so much going on and so much planned for the coming years, the role of the CLC may be more important than ever. They bring a candidate’s vantage point directly into the inner circles of leadership. We obviously can’t always do exactly what candidates want or share every detail of the decision-making process, but I believe firmly that we disregard their perspective at our peril, the same as with any critical stakeholder or customer segment. Let’s face it, without our candidates, the CAS has no future.

I want to thank Jeanne and William for their time! I look forward to seeing the continual evolution of the CAS Admissions process and how the CLC will continue to provide the candidate voice as part of that process. I have enjoyed my six years volunteering with the CLC and very much appreciate the thoughtful and dedicated members and candidates of the CLC who have helped support CAS Admissions initiatives.