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
This project seeks to examine the relationship between home and community gardening practices, mental health indicators, community building, and socio-economic well-being (with an emphasis on food security) in resettled refugee populations. Existing literature on refugee populations suggests that refugees face…
This project examines relationships between home and community gardening practices, mental health indicators, community building, and socio-economic well-being in resettled refugee populations. Existing literature suggests refugees face a decreased probability of sustaining socio-economic development if nutritional and general health needs…
The projects goals are to delay the age of marriage and enhance girls’ agency and voice in rural communities in northwestern Nigeria by reducing social and economic barriers to female schooling and providing group-based mentoring and support. Dr. Larsen will…
The long-term goal is to achieve sustainable funding for the Kenya HDSS site through external sources. To that end David Larsen will support scientific dissemination efforts of data that has already been collected at the Kenya HDSS site and to…
At present, it is unclear if the anti-inflammatory effects of a vegetarian diet directly benefit competitive athletes who engage in high-intensity exercise. Therefore, Redmond aims to directly measure levels of pro- and anti-inflammatory biomarkers and assess overall diet quality (using…