College Research Center

Welcome to the College of

David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics Research Center

The Research Center helps foster a vibrant disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research community within the College, and facilitates, encourages, and recognizes individual and collaborative scholarly research by faculty.

Our faculty engage in a wide variety of research activities that impact the lives of individuals, families, organizations and the community. Their fields of expertise include child and family studies, marriage and family therapy, public health, food studies and nutrition, social work and sport management.

Recent topics of funded projects include: children’s self-regulation in an urban environment, the economic security of disadvantaged and at-risk families through Social Security reform, bullying and domestic partner violence, social media uses in marketing, reduction of health disparities and promoting health and healthy lifestyles among minority communities, improving healthcare for persons with disabilities, , and trauma research training for undergraduate veterans.

Funds from private foundations as well as federal grants have supported faculty investigations. Additionally, faculty members have an active publication agenda, in the past year publishing over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as book chapters, and authoring and co-authoring books in their fields. Faculty members contribute to the numerous research institutes, centers and special programs in the college as well as in programs throughout the university, such as the University-wide Gerontology Center, the School of Education, the College of Law and the Burton Blatt Institute.

While the College is highly diverse in its disciplinary fields and areas of research interest among its faculty, all are committed to studying change and potential for change across a broad array of human needs, aspirations, and institutions; that is, to the study of human dynamics in its widest sense. The Research Center, often in collaboration with academic departments and centers or institutes, will sponsor or co-sponsor activities including seminars and brown bag luncheons highlighting cutting edge faculty research. These may involve both internal and external speakers in areas of faculty interest.

For faculty who are seeking external sponsorship to carry out their research, we provide support for their efforts. Annually, small seed grants are competitively awarded to support proposal development. We also assist in finding appropriate funding sponsors and in proposal development, as well as navigating the University sponsored-project system, including the Office of Sponsored Programs and the SU Institutional Review Board.

In short, we are here to help. We welcome your thoughts and look forward to working with you.

Deborah J. Monahan Named Interim Associate Dean of the Falk College Research Center

Professor Deborah J. Monahan is leading the research efforts of the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics in the role as interim associate dean of research. Read More...

School of Social Work Professor Works with the American Evaluation Association

Karen Kirkhart, professor, School of Social Work served as a writing team member at the American Evaluation Association, a resource for program evaluation and other related inquiry. The team developed a statement on cultural competence in evaluation, identifying definitions and expectations for cultural competence, guiding both evaluators and the funders of evaluation.

The statement is significant because it identifies how those designing and carrying out evaluations conduct themselves and their work and also what the public should expect of evaluators.

Approved by the American Evaluation Association board in March, the statement was supported by the full membership in April, it is available on the American Evaluation Association’s website, www.eval.org/ccstatement.asp and through the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics’s Research Center.

Teaching and using social media in the classroom

Assistant professor Linchi Kwok began using social media tools in his classroom teaching earlier this year. In addition to managing a blog at http://linchikwok.blogspot.com/about trends and news, he encourages his students to interact with him on his blog to keep them informed on current issues while offering them opportunities to interact with other hospitality professionals who also visit his blog, which he markets through his industry involvement at national, state and local levels.

Recently, Kwok was invited by the Career Center of the College of Human Sciences at Texas Tech University to contribute to a blog at http://graduatingsuccess.wordpress.com, where he will provide career advice to college students and discuss career management issues with the students in his Hospitality Human Resource Management class and Leadership & Career Management class.