2006-07 Paul P. Fidler Research Grant

The 2006-07 grant cycle is now complete. See the announcement below for more information on this year's grant recipient. For general information about the Fidler Grant, please visit www.sc.edu/fye/research/grant/index.html Please check back this spring for information about future grant opportunities.

Parents, Cell Phones, & College Students:
National Resource Center announces 2006-07 Fidler Grant Recipient

Sept. 19, 2006. Columbia, SC - Today the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition announced Dr. Barbara Hofer, Associate Professor of Psychology at Middlebury College in Vermont, as the recipient of the 2006-07 Paul P. Fidler Research Grant. The grant, designed to encourage and enable scholarly research on issues related to college student transitions, includes a financial stipend and travel to two national conferences. The abstract from Dr. Hofer's winning proposal appears below.

The Electronic Tether:
Parental Regulation, Self-Regulation, and the Role of Technology in College Transitions

One of the primary psychosocial tasks of the period of emerging adulthood is to become an autonomous, self-governing, self-regulating individual. Increased use of email and cell phones, however, means that students are often electronically tethered to their parents, yet little is known about the influence of the frequency and content of this contact on student development during the transition to college and to adulthood. Using a web-based format for data collection we will survey students and their parents during the sophomore year of college and compare this to our pilot data from first-year students and their parents in order to explore these developmental progressions both in the transition to college and the transitions within college.

In only its second year, the Paul P. Fidler Research Grant has become a well-respected and highly-competitive grant program. The Center received 92 proposals from researchers and practitioners from throughout the United States. Among the outstanding research projects selected as finalists were:

• Heath Boice-Pardee of Rochester Institute of Technology, for his study entitled The Sophomore Transition: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Student Development
  
  
• Peter Mather of Ohio University for his study entitled An Investigation of the Experience of Traditional-Age Students Moving From On-campus to Off-campus Living
  
  
• Crystal Park of the University of Connecticut, for her study entitled A Stress and Coping Model of Adjustment to the First Year of Graduate School
  
  
• Susan Sy of California State University, Fullerton for her study entitled The Influence of Family Obligations on Latina Students' College Adjustment

Past Recipients:
2005-2006 Award - Christine and Michael Kirk-Kuwaye of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa for their study entitled A Study of Engagement Patterns of Lateral and Vertical Transfer Students During their First Semester at a Public Research University