Dr. Joshua Miller is Awarded the 2018 William A. Owens Creative Research Award
Joshua D. Miller, OIBR Fellow and a professor and director of clinical training in the psychology department at Franklin College, has played a leading role in developing, testing and advocating a new model of understanding personality disorders.
Mental health professionals have struggled to treat patients with psychopathy and narcissism. His research helped demonstrate that these personality disorders are “built” from the same five basic components found in “normal” personality and that these disorders represent configurations of these traits that are problematic because of their extremity and/or inflexibility. Many clinicians prefer this approach because it provides more focused tools with greater therapeutic potential. Dr. Miller’s influential research over the last 15 years helped lay the groundwork for changes in the official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition.
The William A. Owens Creative Research Award recognizes outstanding bodies of work in social and behavioral sciences that have gained broad recognition.
Over the course of a five-year project, Emilie Smith, OIBR Fellow and head of the human development and family science department at UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences, and her team from Pennsylvania State University studied 72 community-based after-school programs in urban, suburban and rural areas in Pennsylvania and Georgia serving children from kindergarten to fifth grade. The staff and children in these programs played the Pax Good Behavior Game, or PaxGBG, a team-based game where children earn privileges to be more active and expressive at given times. It is a game that encourages good behavior, positive reinforcement and self-regulation can keep children on task and out of trouble. Read 
The Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) has a new feature on their website that will allow you to search federal funding of Social and Behavioral Science research by state. Included in this downloadable information are highlights of the total amount of federal social science research funding as well as the top funding agencies and recipient institutions. Check out the information for Georgia 
We are proud to announce Lilian Sattler, an OIBR Affiliate and Grantsmanship Development Program alumna, is the recent recipient of a highly competitive KL2 award as part of the Atlanta and Clinical Translational Science Institute Training Program. The proposal entitled, “Effect of Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension Eating Pattern on Hemodynamic Markers in Advanced Heart Failure Patients,” will be a collaboration between Dr. Sattler and senior faculty in Medicine and Nursing at Emory University and the UGA/AU Medical Partnership to carry out clinical research in advanced heart failure patients, using the Georgia Clinical & Translational Science Alliance infrastructure.
Principal Investigator Rebecca Lieberman-Betz, an Associate Professor with the UGA Department of Communication Sciences and Special Education and a graduate of OIBR’s Grantsmanship Development Program, was recently awarded a new 5 year, $1.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Programs.
The Association for Psychological Science has named UGA Psychology Assistant Professor Justin Lavner as a 2017 APS Rising Star. This designation recognizes outstanding psychological scientists in the earliest stages of their research career post-PhD whose innovative work has already advanced the field and signal great potential for their continued contributions. Go 
Congratulations to Jody Clay-Warner, OIBR Fellow and Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor and head of the sociology department in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, Maria E. Len-Rios, OIBR Affiliate and associate professor of public relations in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, and Emilie Smith, OIBR Fellow and the Barber Distinguished Professor and head of human development and family science in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences. They are three of the nine female faculty members named 2017-2018 Women’s Leadership Fellows.