Falk College Research Center
The Research Center helps foster a vibrant research community within the College, and facilitates individual and collaborative scholarly research by faculty that is inclusive of both graduate and undergraduate students.
Our faculty members engage in a wide variety of research activities that affect the lives of individuals, families, organizations and the community, locally and nationally. Their fields of expertise include human development and family science, marriage and family therapy, public health, food studies and nutrition, social work and sport management.
Recent topics of funded projects include: Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia caregiver support, identification of cognitive impairment among older adults, refugee mental health and economic well-being, refugee and immigrant farming and mental health, health care reforms and its impact on rural behavioral health care providers, cardiovascular disease risk and environmental toxins, sport participation and influences, infectious disease epidemiology (specifically mosquito borne illnesses), mindfulness training for children and trauma resiliency, extracurricular actives and outcomes for elementary children, religiosity and mortality risk, neighborhood violence, food system planning and policy, domestic violence, improving healthcare and access for persons with disabilities, sports analytics, residential treatment facilities direct care workers, vacationing behaviors and health outcomes, and nutrition, pregnancy and health outcomes, among others.
Funds from federal and state grants, foundations, as well as internal funds from the University and Falk College support faculty research investigations. Faculty members collaborate across all schools and colleges and contribute to the research institutes, centers and working groups. 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, sponsors activities including seminars and colloquia highlighting innovative faculty research. For faculty who are seeking external sponsorship to conduct their research, we provide support for their efforts. Annually, small seed grants for junior faculty are competitively awarded to support proposal development as well as a host of other internal funding opportunities campus wide. We assist in finding appropriate funding sponsors and collaborators, internal and external proposal development including strategy, narrative review, and budgeting, and post award support in addition to navigating the University sponsored-project system, including the Office of Sponsored Programs, Office of Sponsored Account, Technology Transfer, and Office of Research and Integrity Protections.
We look forward to working with you.
Recent Faculty Funded Research
To help create culturally-informed practices of care, as well as fill a crucial gap in services to promote refugee health, Falk College at Syracuse University and The Multicultural Association of Medical Interpreters (MAMI) will collaborate to develop a training module…
A recently launched pilot project to screen for cognitive decline as part of routine community health services currently offered to older adults is expected to demonstrate the benefits of early detection of Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias (AD/D). One major…
Matthew Spitzmueller, assistant professor in the School of Social Work in Falk College, has been selected to participate in one of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) leadership development programs designed to equip leaders across the country—in every sector and…
Assistant professor of public health, David Larsen, is the principal investigator for a trial comparing different spray strategies to control malaria vectors in Zambia, funded by the President’s Malaria Initiative for $75,115. He is also co-investigator for a trial comparing…
Professor of public health, Katherine McDonald, received funding from the Disability and Rehabilitation Research Program, Administration for Community Living/DHHS for the Community 4All Project, a collaborative research project involving Syracuse University and The Self-Advocacy Association of New York State (SANYS)….