The opioid epidemic may have cost U.S. state and federal governments up to $37.8 billion in lost tax revenue due to opioid-related employment loss, according to Penn State researchers.
Penn State President Eric Barron presented 11 awards to more than 30 graduate students in recognition of outstanding achievement during the annual Graduate Student Awards Luncheon held April 11 at the Nittany Lion Inn.
Thirteen graduate students received the Penn State Alumni Association Dissertation Award, Distinguished Doctoral Scholar Medal in recognition of their outstanding professional accomplishment and achievement in scholarly research in any of the disciplinary areas of arts and humanities; social sciences—applied and basic; physical and computational sciences—applied and basic; life and health sciences; and engineering.
Ten Penn State graduate students have received the 2019 Harold F. Martin Graduate Assistant Outstanding Teaching Award.
Janet Welsh, associate research professor of health and human development and senior research associate with the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, has worked in prevention research since 1994, with the aim of improving the lives of people and communities impacted by substance abuse and addiction. "I want to see how we can use what we have at the University to really help solve social problems, and being able to work with real communities, kids and families has always been important to me," said Welsh.
Yo Jackson, associate director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network and professor of psychology at Penn State, recently provided testimony on strengthening prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect to the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor’s subcommittee on Civil Rights and Human Services.
Hannah Ross, a student in the integrated undergraduate/Master of Health Administration program in the Department of Health Policy and Administration, has received the 2019 Jennifer S. Cwynar Community Achievement Award. Ross is also a recipient of the 2019 Edith Pitt Chace Award, presented by the College of Health and Human Development Alumni Society.
To help build resilient families in Pennsylvania, Penn State researchers like Janet Welsh are taking prevention research out of the lab and into communities where it matters most. "We aren’t going to solve the whole problem of drug abuse ourselves," Welsh said, "but because of our clear mission and track record of success, we can be a piece of the solution."
On April 3, five interdisciplinary teams of students participated in the final pitches round of the IdeaMakers Challenge. Hosted by the College of Information Sciences and Technology during Penn State Startup Week, the challenge tasked student teams representing two or more majors to pitch an idea that aims to solve a problem using information technology.
Parents in the midst of a psychologically or physically aggressive argument tend to also be aggressive with their children, according to researchers at Penn State. The team found that this "spillover" of aggression toward children causes kids to exhibit greater fear during future incidents of interparental aggression, regardless of the severity of those future incidents, than children who do not experience this spillover effect.
Penn State’s Consortium to Combat Substance Abuse recently announced the first three recipients of its Community Fellows Program awards, designed to provide release time for faculty members to develop community collaborations and build sustainable, evidence-based or evidence-informed programs, policies and practices that can effectively address substance use and related issues within a targeted community in Pennsylvania.
Melina Czymoniewicz-Klippel, assistant teaching professor of biobehavioral health, is a recipient of a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant from the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence. Her project will involve analysis of online written assignments of students, to examine the impact of immersive experiences on student engagement and learning.
Krista Wilkinson, professor of communication sciences and disorders in the College of Health and Human Development, has received Penn State's 2019 President’s Award for Engagement with Students.
Renee Bailey, administrative support assistant in the College of Health and Human Development, has been honored with Penn State's 2019 Support Staff Award.
Nilam Ram, professor of human development and family studies, will present “Analysis of Experience Sampling and Ecological Momentary Assessment Data: Part 3: Using Differential Equation and Data Mining Algorithms” at the next Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design Recent Topics in Research Methods Seminar Series. The seminar will be held from 4 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 9, in 116 Henderson Building at University Park.
