Falk College strives to achieve excellence in education not only through good teaching but also through participation in active research. Our students benefit by learning from researchers who are working at the cutting-edge of knowledge, within well-equipped laboratories, and in projects that are both domestic and abroad. We encourage both undergraduates and graduate engagement to achieve not only a rewarding educational experience but also enhanced career opportunities upon graduation. Learn more about the different types of research awards.
Extramural AwardCommunity and Work Participation Disparities: A Program of the ADA Participation Action Research Consortium (ADA PARC)
ADA PARC is a multi-site research collaboration bringing together the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) centers to examine the factors that influence the participation of people with disabilities in their communities to identify key participation disparities and strategically act to address them. We are conducting a multiregional strategic gap analyses across three primary participation areas community living, community participation, and economic equity. In some areas, such as community living and work, this will involve mining existing large population and community datasets so we can inform the benchmarking of key participation disparities and promising practices at state, regional and community levels. The ADA PARC will create a tool and a systematic process for assessing community participation at the community level for people to assess their communities.
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2020-2021 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant AwardInterpersonal and Leadership Skills Family Based Brief Intervention with Youth: Determining Effectiveness, Feasibility, and Acceptability
Primary-age students with social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties (SEBD) are at a significantly higher risk of experiencing poor outcomes such as high school dropout rates, poor academic achievement, poor post-school outcomes, and social outcomes. Adverse intrapersonal and interpersonal outcomes may be particularly increased for students with SEBD who face challenges in their well-being, connectedness to peers, and relationships with peers and adults.
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2020-2021 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant AwardIntergenerational Transmission of Trauma in Military Families
Child maltreatment is a significant issue in the U.S. military, with evidence showing elevated levels of fatal child maltreatment and shaken baby syndrome in military communities. The unique characteristics and circumstances of military families underscore the need for understanding child maltreatment in military families.
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2020-2021 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant AwardAge at League Entry and Early All-Cause Mortality Risk Among NFL Players
Is age at entry associated with all-cause mortality among NFL players, after controlling for position-of-play cluster, career NFL game exposure, birth year, body mass index, entry year, and ability? In this cohort study of 9,049 National Football League players, an earlier age at NFL entry was associated with a statistically significant increase in the hazard ratio of death controlling for position-of-play cluster, career NFL game exposure, BMI, birth year, and expected ability at League entry.
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2019-2020 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant AwardAssessing the Social-Emotional Pathways between Organized Sports and Young Adult Outcomes
This study investigates the social-emotional mechanisms through which organized sports participation is associated with long-term educational and health outcomes. Large numbers of young people engage in sports through organized activities outside of school hours. Organized sports – which include athletic activities that are supervised and/or facilitated by adults in the contexts of sports teams, athletic lessons, or community athletics centers – offer young people important opportunities to develop social-emotional skills and prosocial beliefs that foster healthy development.
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2019-2020 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant AwardEstimating the Causal Effects of Organized Activities: Testing the Efficiency of Propensity
This study tests the utility of propensity score matching to study the effect of organized activity participation in adolescence on long-term outcomes. The potential of organized activities has taken on new importance in recent years as content that can help support the healthy development of youth. Organized activities – including after-school programs, extracurricular activities, and summer programs – receive substantial federal, state and private investments, and rigorous methods are needed to assess their impact on young people’s educational and labor market outcomes.
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Extramural AwardIntergenerational Antecedents of Care to Older Adults Approaching the End of Life With and Without Dementia
In this project, researchers examine vulnerability of older adults in relation to the care-careers of their adult children over the family life cycle. Results will inform theory about how and when children respond to their parents’ early investments in them. Goals of the research are to: (1) link early transfers of valued resources of time, money, and emotion to rates of change in the amount of care adult children provide to their vulnerable older parents; (2) test a novel methodological approach—the “countdown model”—that uses time-to-death to represent global vulnerability that triggers the delivery of care to older parents; and (3) identify whether care to older parents is more strongly associated with time-to-death from Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia-related causes compared to other causes.
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2019-2020 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant AwardHealth Behaviors among Pregnant Women with Prior Pregnancy Loss
During pregnancy, the presence of maternal stress significantly increases the risk for adverse birth outcomes, including preterm birth and intrauterine growth restriction, both of which can result in low birth weight. Exposure to stress during pregnancy may affect food choices, exercise habits, use of tobacco or other drugs, and sleep patterns. Levels of psychosocial stress specifically may be particularly elevated for pregnant women who have previously experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth, which occurs in 1 in 4 pregnancies.
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Extramural AwardPaternal Risk Factors and Preschoolers Academic and Social Skills in Kenya; The Mediating role of Protective Factor
Using propositions within developmental psychopathology and parenting theories and frameworks, this study examines the associations between paternal risk factors (intimate partner violence, paternal depression, destructive conflict resolution behavior, and harsh parenting) and childhood outcomes (literacy and numeracy skills and internalizing and externalizing behaviors) and the mediating role of protective factors (social support, ethnic socialization, and constructive conflict resolution behavior) on these associations in Kenyan families. Participants are 350 fathers, their wives/partners and preschool-aged children, and their children’s teachers. Researchers hope that findings will inform the development of parenting policies and intervention programs that target risk and protective factors and paternal parenting and childhood development in low- and middle-income countries.
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2019-2020 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant AwardManagerial Diversity and Misconduct by Male Professional Athletes
Organizations and managers have a strong interest in preventing and redressing employee misconduct, which is voluntary behavior that deviates from prevailing norms. When employees are admired public figures, as is often the case with professional athletes, the negative consequences of misconduct to organizations may be more likely and more severe than in other contexts. This research project represents the first examination of the organizational determinants of misconduct by high-profile employees of professional sports teams.
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2019-2020 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant AwardOlympic Sponsorship in Small States; Strategies and Partnerships for Caribbean National Olympic Committees
The Caribbean Association of National Olympic Committees (“CANOC”) consists of 28 National Olympic Committees (“NOC”) in the Caribbean region. A key agenda of CANOC’s member NOCs is developing an Olympic sponsorship program to provide the needed support for their national team and sport events and to diversify the revenue stream heavily reliant on the International Olympic Committee and government subsidies. Being placed in a unique sport market of small states (cf. characterized by a small population, confined economy, small private sectors), Caribbean NOCs have struggled to bring sponsorship revenue and existing knowledge on sponsorship had limited applicability (cf. as mainly derived from advanced sport markets).
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Extramural AwardSocial Work Practice Fellow Program: Three-Model Implementation
Syracuse University School of Social Work Continuing Education Program has been awarded $21,000.00 in a collaborative grant with Adelphi University from the Health Foundation of Western and Central New York. The 18-month study intends to compare three models of Social Work Practice Fellow (SWPF) program delivery exclusive to social work supervisors. Process and outcome data would be used to assess feasibility, acceptability, and impact of the program in each delivery model as well as in a comparison across models.
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Extramural AwardHeffernan takes over leadership of NSF Research Education for Undergraduates (REU) Program for Trauma Research with Veterans
Kevin Heffernan, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Exercise Science, will take over leadership of the REU program started by Brooks B. Gump, Ph.D., MPH, Falk Endowed Professor of Public Health, in 2012. This program is for undergraduate veterans and non-veterans (five openings for each) interested in becoming trauma researchers. As one of many on-going interdisciplinary collaborations in the Falk College, the REU program also includes faculty members from the Aging Studies Institute and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. The grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) will support the REU program and is now recruiting undergraduate veterans and non-veterans to participate. Students can earn $3,000 for participating in an intensive four-week summer program each June at Syracuse University.
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2019-2020 SU CUSE GrantA Consent Toolkit for Genomics Research Inclusive of Adults with Intellectual Disability: Establishing Feasibility
Adults with intellectual disability experience significant health disparities, and can benefit dramatically from genomics research. Yet ethical, legal, and social challenges in the process of informed consent present barriers to the generation of new knowledge to promote health equity. We can identify solutions to these persistent barriers by capitalizing on human rights advances so that adults with intellectual disability can meaningfully control research participation decisions.
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2019-2020 SU CUSE GrantAgricultural Guestworkers and the New Immigrant Economy
Due to strenuous working conditions and low average wages, labor shortages are a consistent challenge in U.S. production agriculture. For decades, farmers have been turning to foreign-born workers to fill labor-intensive positions. This study focuses on the H-2A agricultural guestworker program, which has been promoted as a solution to the contradicting labor needs of farmers and the increasingly precarious environment for undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
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Intramural Sponsored ProjectCross-Cultural Engagement of First Year Students
The proposed Cross-Cultural Engagement Project is designed to provide first-year undergraduate students in the Department of Human Development and Family Science (HDFS) with an opportunity to explore issues of diversity and inclusion by providing them with multifaceted opportunities for intercultural engagement. In the second semester of their first-year, a cohort of twenty-five HDFS undergraduates will be invited to participate in a seminar course that will include active learning experiences that challenge them to engage with cultures and communities other than their own.
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2019-2020 SU CUSE GrantDeveloping Machine Learning Classifiers on Uncovering Patterns of Intimate Partner Violence Risk
We seek support from the CUSE’s Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research Grant committee to conduct a two-year study that will utilize text-mining algorithms to uncover patterns or typologies of intimate partner violence (IPV) from women’s narratives. For the purpose of this grant, IPV is conceptualized as the motivational need of aggressors to exert coercive control in close relationships and aggressors need to use physical, sexual, and psychological violence to reinforce coercive control in relationships.
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2019-2020 SU CUSE GrantE-sport, psychological well-being, and sport participation: Data collection and natural field experimental analysis
E-sport participation can be conceptualized as competitive video game played at grassroot levels, where the video game of interest is played in professional competitions. In terms of the time use and prevalence, competitive online gaming is an important activity among American youth. According to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, more than 92% of 1,641 sampled Americans age 17-27 had at least one experience with competitive online gaming.
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2019-2020 SU CUSE GrantEffects of Maternal Stress, Dietary Intake, and Physical Activity Behaviors on Adverse Birth Outcomes
Maternal exposure to acute or chronic stress during fetal development leads to adjustments that have both short- and long-term consequences. Our proposed study is a multi-disciplinary investigation of maternal stress exposure, maternal stress response, and adverse birth outcomes (including pre-term birth and low birth weight). We plan to conduct a prospective cohort study of pregnant women to assess whether dietary intake and/or physical activity (PA) mediate or moderate the relationship between maternal stress exposure and adverse birth outcomes.
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2019-2020 SU CUSE GrantEnvironmental Exposures and Child Health Outcomes 2 (EECHO2)
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of death in the United States and disables 10 million Americans each year, and literature demonstrates an association between metals (e.g., lead) and CVD risk. Supported by our most recent R01, we finished recruitment of 297 children in a study being named the “Environmental Exposures and Child Health Outcomes” (EECHO) study. EECHO considered the cross-sectional association between Pb exposure and cardiovascular outcomes in 9-11-year-old children.
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2019-2020 SU CUSE GrantManagement Team Diversity and Misconduct by Male Professional Athletes
Organizations and managers have a strong interest in preventing and redressing employee misconduct, which is voluntary behavior that deviates from prevailing norms. When employees are admired public figures, as is often the case with professional athletes, the negative consequences of misconduct to organizations may be more likely and more severe, than in other contexts. This research project represents the first examination of the organizational determinants of misconduct by high-profile employees of professional sports teams.
Learn more about this research.
2019-2020 SU CUSE GrantUrban Food Forests: Ecological-Human Connectivity and Rights to Access
The Urban Food Forests: Ecological-Human Connectivity and Rights to Access proposal weaves together ecological sciences, landscape design, and urban food policy to develop an innovative approach to assessing the potential for edible urban food forests that serve as connective ecological and human infrastructure. As “green infrastructure,” urban forests provide critical ecological services such as sequestering carbon, ameliorating urban heat island effect, reducing storm water runoff, and mitigating climate change.
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2018-2019 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant AwardAgricultural Guestworkers and the New Immigrant Economy
This research will look at the circumstances and experiences of farmworkers who participate in federally sponsored guestworker programs, as well as farmers who use these programs, throughout New York State. This pilot study will consist of approximately sixty in-depth interviews at four sites, with farmworkers and farm owners who participate in the Department of Labor’s H-2A agricultural guestworker program. Due to historically low wages and physically demanding work conditions, labor shortages are a consistent challenge in production agriculture.
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2018-2019 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant AwardA Logistic Regression Analysis of Reported Concussion Risk among NCAA FBS Football Players
The present research seeks to analyze and estimate a salient concussion risk factor for NCAA FBS football players. The results of this study have the potential to inform NCAA student-athlete concussion policy. College gridiron play features student-athletes who are faster, larger, and stronger, on average than their high school counterparts. While learning this new level of play as freshmen and sophomores, players may be at increased risk of concussion due to increased incidence of improper positioning and lower average strength, ceteris paribus.
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2018-2019 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant AwardCoping with Losses: Need Un-fulfillment and its Influence on Sport Consumer’s Temporal Psychological Well-being
Losing is an imperative part of sport, but has garnered relatively less attention in sport consumer well-being research. Therefore, this research project investigates how sport consumers psychologically process their sport team’s loss and how the process impacts one’s well-being state.
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