The IHDSC Faculty and Research Affiliate community leverages interdisciplinary expertise and partnerships in education, health and healthcare, social and human development, economics, and more to create new knowledge and spark meaningful social change. We invite you to join us in celebrating the recent awards received by members of our community. We are thrilled to provide support to these talented and impactful research teams that share our commitment to unraveling inequality and expanding opportunity.
Associate Professor of Psychology and Social Intervention, Dr. Rezarta Bilali, has received funding from the Spencer Foundation to investigate how history education evolves through participation in and engagement with social movements for racial justice. She examines how activists, through their engagement in action, make sense of the history of racial struggle, and how this history fuels their ongoing activism. Additionally, she investigates the historical narrative of racial struggle that the larger public is exposed to through social media.
Dr. Elise Cappella, Vice Dean for Research and Professor of Applied Psychology, and Dr. Kristie Patten, Vice Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Occupational Therapy, have received funding from the NYC Department of Education to expand the implementation of the Path Program in classrooms in New York City. This project is a cross-center partnership with IHDSC and the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools (Metro Center). The Path Program is a NYC DOE Specialized Program that strives to disrupt the historical segregation of Black and Brown students in restrictive special education settings and promote the inclusion of students with emotional disabilities within community schools.
Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology, Dr. Lauren Mims, has received funding as a subrecipient to the University of Arizona to partner with Dr. Renae Mayes on Black youth suicide prevention research in Richmond Public Schools. This research is a direct response to a call set forth in 2019 by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to help curtail the worrying rise in suicide rates for Black children and teenagers. It is funded by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health.
Dr. Pamela A. Morris-Perez, Professor of Applied Psychology, received additional support for her research in early childhood and child development from NIH’s Diversity Supplement mechanism. The project draws upon Morris-Perez’s Smart Beginnings model to promote positive parenting practices. It investigates whether changes in parenting behaviors during the first four years of a child’s life contribute to children’s early school-age functioning among a low-income, racially/ethnically diverse sample, and whether these associations are moderated by Smart Beginnings intervention status and, separately, maternal race/ethnicity. The project will be conducted in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Morris-Perez has also received funding as a subrecipient to NYU Grossman School of Medicine on a project funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH). The research collaborative includes a cross-center partnership with NYU Steinhardt’s Center for Practice and Research at the Intersection of Information, Society, and Methodology (PRIISM) to study the adverse effects of COVID-19 through community-based preventative interventions for families with young children living in poverty.
Dr. Shabnam Javdani, Associate Professor of Applied Psychology, and Dr. Erin Godfrey, Director of IHDSC and Associate Professor of Applied Psychology, have received a grant to provide evidence-based, gender-responsive, trauma-informed, and race-conscious training and support to juvenile justice jurisdictions across New York State. The goal of the effort is to improve the juvenile legal system’s response to system-involved girls and gender non-conforming youth in urban and rural areas statewide. The project will also pilot a “train the trainer” model for the Resilience, Opportunity, Safety, Education, Strength (ROSES) program that can be distributed to jurisdictions statewide. NYU will serve as a subrecipient to the New York State Unified Court System in which the primary funder is the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Dr. Carly Tubbs-Dolan, deputy director leading the Primary Education and Learning in Emergencies (PELE) program at NYU Global TIES for Children, has received funding as a subrecipient to World Learning to partner on a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Global TIES will serve as World Learning’s resource partner to provide technical and capacity building to support the Lebanese education system’s institutional capacity for sustainability and self-reliance.
Dr. Tubbs-Dolan has also received funding as a subrecipient to War Child Holland to partner on a project sponsored by an anonymous donor to continue their work developing and testing a prototype game-based formative assessment tool with an integrated teacher dashboard that can help teachers to assess children’s learning. The aim of this phase of the project is to gain a better understanding of teachers’ needs in using the formative assessment tool and to improve the tool’s features to allow for greater flexibility and efficiency.
