Category: News

Each year, the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) releases their college and university rankings for federal social and behavioral science research and development. This year, the University of Georgia ranked #28 with $16.3m of funding for social science for FY 2018. This make us the highest ranked school in Georgia! COSSA 2020 Rankings

This data comes from the National Center for Science and Education Statistics’ Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey for fiscal year 2018. The “Federal R&D” column lists combined federal research and development expenditures for social sciences, psychology, law, communications, and social work.

Gene Brody, Regents Professor, OIBR Fellow and director of UGA’s Center for Family Research, will deliver the keynote address on Monday, Nov. 18, at the National Institutes of Health’s inaugural Rural Health Seminar in Bethesda, Maryland.

Brody’s talk, titled “Resilience to Adversity and the Early Origins of Disease,” will examine how living in conditions of economic hardship and other stressors particularly influence both the biology and physiology of rural African American children, making them more vulnerable to the chronic diseases of aging when they are adults. This phenomenon, called “weathering,” is a major focus of Brody’s research, conducted by the Center for Family Research that is made possible by funding from multiple NIH institutes. The talk will also discuss how some individuals overcome this weathering and demonstrate tremendous resilience.

The Rural Health Seminar will bring together researchers, medical practitioners and others to explore topics in rural health and to share research ideas for how innovations in clinical and translational science could improve rural health outcomes.

The event will be webcast live from the following address: https://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=35176

Congratulations to the Owens Institute Fellows and Affiliates who have been awarded funds through the second round of Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants.

The winning proposals and faculty teams are:

• Overcoming Physical Distances with the Virtual Family Room: Virtual and Augmented Reality Communication Platforms for Deployed Military Families

Sun Joo “Grace” Ahn (OIBR Fellow; Primary Investigator; Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication), Kyle Johnson (College of Engineering), Catherine O’Neal (OIBR Fellow; College of Family and Consumer Sciences) and Dawn Robinson (OIBR Fellow; Franklin College of Arts and Sciences).

• Creating a Healthier Georgia through Diabetes Prevention

Alison Berg (Primary Investigator) and Joan Koonce (College of Family and Consumer Sciences) and Ellen Evans (OIBR Affiliate; College of Education).

• Building a National Center of Excellence for Nature-Based Infrastructure Solutions

Brian Bledsoe (Primary Investigator; College of Engineering), Jon Calabria and Brian Orland (OIBR Affiliate; College of Environment and Design), Susana Ferreira and Craig Landry (College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences), Rhett Jackson and Nathan Nibbelink (OIBR Fellow; Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources), Shana Jones (Carl Vinson Institute of Government), Don Nelson and Marshall Shepherd (Franklin College of Arts and Sciences), Scott Pippin and Mark Risse (Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant), Amy Rosemond (Odum School of Ecology) and Meredith Welch-Divine (Graduate School).

• Establishing a New Animal Model to Assess Influenza-Tuberculosis Co-Infection and Vaccination

Fred Quinn (Primary Investigator), Steve Divers, Ankita Garg, Tuhina Gupta, Russ Karls, Balazs Rada, Ted Ross and Kaori Sakamoto (College of Veterinary Medicine); Steve Harvey (Office of Research); Shannon Quinn (OIBR Affiliate; Franklin College of Arts and Sciences); Christopher Whalen (OIBR Affiliate; College of Public Health) and external collaborators.

• Impact of the School and Surrounding Environment on Implementation of Georgia’s Statewide Childhood Obesity Policy

Janani Thapa (Primary Investigator), Marsha Davis, Jennifer Gay (OIBR GDP), Justin Ingles and Donglan “Stacy” Zhang (College of Public Health); Lan Mu (Franklin College of Arts and Sciences); Michael Schmidt (College of Education); Chen Zhen (College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences) and external collaborators.

These seed grants will facilitate research projects spanning 15 colleges, schools and other units at UGA. The work enabled by these grants will support subsequent applications for external funding.

Read more about the Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grant program.

UGA Today recently featured Dr. Assaf Oshri for their Focus on Faculty article.

Dr. Oshri is a Fellow with OIBR and an associate professor in the College of Family and Consumer Science. He is also the Director of the Stress, Trauma, Adversity and Resilience work group and the director of the college’s Youth Development Institute.

Read more about Dr. Oshri’s background, awards and his research on at-risk youth overcoming exposure to early life adversity.

Fifty years ago this month, NASA put two astronauts on the moon. NASA’s next giant leap will be sending humans to Mars, projected for the 2030s, and a University of Georgia researcher is partnering with the space agency to explore the challenges of such a mission.

Dorothy Carter, OIBR Fellow and Psychology I/O Assistant Professor, is an expert in successful communication and collaboration among multiple teams and this will be an essential part of deep space travel. Carter specializes in teamwork and examines how multiple groups work together in pursuit of larger goals.

“I’m especially interested in understanding how large systems comprised of multiple teams from different areas of expertise work together effectively,” said Carter. “Breakdowns often occur when people with different perspectives try to collaborate, but collaboration across disciplines is essential in order to address many of the most important problems facing humanity.”

Carter is principal investigator on Project FUSION (Facilitating Unified Systems of Interdependent Organizational Networks), funded by a $1 million grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Project FUSION aims to better understand how the spaceflight “multi-team systems” involved in a long-duration space exploration mission will need to function in order to send a team of humans to Mars successfully.

Read more about Dr. Carter’s research.

Research led by OIBR Fellow and research scientist Catherine O’Neal, with UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences, says enhancing community connections for service members and their civilian spouses may be important in supporting their mental and physical health.

“Military families face challenges, but they should not be defined as challenged families, as that implies dysfunction,” she said. “We work hard to avoid the stigma that because they face situational stressors related to military service, such as deployments, they always experience poor outcomes. Some of them do, and some of them don’t. That is one driving interest in my research—understanding why some people thrive in a challenging situation, and others don’t fare so well.”

Working with colleagues at multiple institutions, O’Neal evaluated data gathered from 273 families to identify the factors that are related to mental health, like anxiety and depression, and that have an impact on physical health for active duty spouses and their civilian partners.

They found a key difference between the service members and their spouses: Service members who were more connected to their military community reported better mental health. Their civilian spouses, on the other hand, reported better mental health when they were more satisfied with military life generally, suggesting quality of life within the military culture is a more influential factor for civilian spouses than being connected to, and engaged with, the military community.

Dr. O’Neal was the lead author on the study, which was published online in the journal Military Psychology.

Since 2016, O’Neal has led or co-authored 14 papers on contexts surrounding military families. She also serves as co-investigator and lead of the research team for Military REACH (MilitaryREACH.org), a project that supports military families by mobilizing research into practical applications.

Tessa Andrews, OIBR Fellow and assistant professor of Genetics, was recently awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation CAREER program, which supports research and outstanding teaching by junior faculty.

Dr. Andrews will lead a five-year, national scale research and education project on the integration of evidence based teaching strategies and using what works most effectively for student learning and to better understand and support the evidence-based teaching in biology.

The research aims to clarify the teaching knowledge that is particularly important for using evidence-based instructional practices in large undergraduate courses. The educational initiatives will design and test a new model of teaching training for graduate students and will expand a video resource library for faculty who want to learn more about evidence-based teaching in science.

Active-learning instruction engages students directly in the learning process and has proven effective, but that effectiveness can vary considerably based on the instructor.

“The need is particularly acute for large biology courses,” said Andrews, whose team will collect data from biology instructors around the country. “The work will focus on the knowledge that college faculty need about teaching and learning to effectively plan and implement active-learning strategies in large classes.”

Read more about Dr. Andrews’ research project here.

 

Faculty Name	OIBR Fellow/Affiliate	GDP Status	Spring 2019 Promotion	Department
Coverdell, Jim	Affiliate		Professor	Sociology
Futris, Ted	Affiliate		Professor	Human Development & Family Science
Seock, Yoo-Kyoung	Affiliate		Professor	Textiles, Merchandising & Interiors
Abraham, Amanda	Fellow	2014 GDP	Associate Professor	Public Adminstration & Policy
Andrews, Tessa	Affiliate		Associate Professor	Genetics
Arroyo, Analisa	Affiliate	2015 GDP	Associate Professor	Communication Studies
Cacciatore, Michael	GDP	2018 GDP	Associate Professor	Public Relations
Caplan, Mary	Affiliate		Associate Professor	Social Work
Clark, Malissa	Affiliate	2014 GDP	Associate Professor	Psychology I/O
Harrison, Ashley	Affiliate	2015 GDP	Associate Professor	Psychology - Educational
Lavner, Justin	Fellow	2015 GDP	Associate Professor	Psychology
Lewis Ellison, Tisha	Affiliate		Associate Professor	Language and Literacy Education
Means, Darris	Affiliate	2015 GDP	Associate Professor	Counseling & Human Development
Shannon, Sarah	Affiliate		Associate Professor	Sociology
Shockley, Kristen	GDP	2017 GDP	Associate Professor	Psychology
So, Jiyeon	Affiliate	2015 GDP	Associate Professor	Communication Studies
Washington, Tiffany	Affiliate	2015 GDP	Associate Professor	Social Work
Wojdynski, Bart	Affiliate		Associate Professor	Journalism
Thompson, Jennifer Jo	Affiliate		Assoc. Research Scientist	Crop & Soil Sciences

There are approximately 14,000 full-time, tenured faculty members in the Southeastern Conference, and to be eligible for a SEC Faculty Achievement award the individual must have achieved the rank of full professor; have a record of extraordinary teaching; and have a record of research that is recognized nationally and/or internationally. Administered by provosts at each of the 14 universities in the conference, Ron Simons, Distinguished Research Professor in the Sociology Department in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, has received this honor for 2019.

Simons’ research has revealed the impact of social and environmental conditions on gene expression, aging and health. His longitudinal studies about the impact of persistent family economic hardship and conflict on biological aging and the development of chronic illness, including cancer, diabetes and dementia, have resulted in the creation of programs for at-risk families. His research has garnered more than $45 million in grant funding, which includes continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health for three decades.

“Dr. Simons is an extraordinary scholar who consistently produces high-impact research, has achieved an impressive record of external funding, and has received numerous professional accolades,” said UGA President Jere W. Morehead. “He has brought great distinction to the University of Georgia and is a deserving recipient of the SEC Faculty Achievement Award.”

Simons is a Fellow with the Owens Institute for Behavioral Research and serves as co-director of the UGA Center on Biological Embedding of Social Events and Relationships, which studies the intersections of genetic and environmental contributions to health and health behavior and he is a Fellow in the Center for Research.

To read more about Dr. Simons and his research, go here.