Bill Quinn (Professor, Human Development and Family Science) has been awarded the UGA Creative Research Medal, for his implementation of the Family Solutions Program, which works with juvenile first offenders and their families.

Established in 1993, the program has graduated more than 750 at-risk youth and their families in Northeast Georgia. Of those, 24 percent have been charged a second time, compared with 59 percent of those who did not receive FSP.

FSP has been documented as being effective for pre-teens and teens, whites and blacks, and males and females. It is offered in communities in Georgia, Illinois, Kansas and Texas, among others.

FSP provides multiple-family settings that include parents, first-offenders and siblings in a program designed to increase family cohesion, establish emotional support, strengthen home-school partnerships, and help participants develop skills in conflict resolution, decision-making and family cooperation.

Quinn is among the researchers using FSP and other strategies in a multimillion-dollar Centers for Disease Control study aimed at reducing middle school violence. He has presented his research at national and international meetings and has written two textbooks, numerous book chapters and refereed journal articles

Michael Rupured (Extension Financial Management Specialist) has been named the 2003 Distinguished Fellow of the Association of Financial Counseling and Planning Education.

Rupured has been an active and contributing member of AFCPE for more than a decade, including serving as president of the organization in 2000. Previously he served as secretary, vice president, board member, and conference program chair.

Those nominating Rupured used words such as “visionary leader, role model, respected, creative, dependable, trusted advisor, innovative and gifted leader.” According to information provided by AFCPE, Rupured has served in leadership roles through his association with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and several editorial boards.

Rupured has helped procure funding and establish the Consumer Financial Literacy Program, a grant-funded project in more than 20 Georgia counties designed to improve the economic well-being of individuals and families through financial literacy education. CFLP is funded by the Georgia Governor's Office of Consumer Affairs. The Consumer Financial Literacy Program consists of four main components to reach specific target audiences and the public with timely information related to the broad goal of improving economic well-being through financial literacy education.

He also helped establish a program called “Personal Financial Choices,” a three-hour workshop offered for individuals in Chapter 13 bankruptcy. The program is a partnership with the Standing U.S. Chapter 13 Trustee, Northern District of Georgia; the Trustee Education Network; the Cooperative Extension Service; and the University of Georgia College of Family and Consumer Sciences and is designed to combat the high rate of personal bankruptcies filed by Georgians, a figure that currently rests at 1 out of nearly 40 citizens.
 

Gene Brody (Professor, Human Development and Family Science) has been named a Regents Professor by the University System Board of Regents, an honor bestowed on distinguished faculty whose scholarship or creative activity is recognized both nationally and internationally as innovative and pace setting. The professorships are granted for an initial period of three years and are renewable for a second three-year period based on recommendations. Awardees receive a $10,000 permanent increase in salary. They also receive a yearly fund of $5,000 in support of their scholarship.

Brody, who also holds the title of Distinguished Research Professor, has built a body of research establishing how parents, other caregivers, siblings and peers influence children’s developmental growth despite a variety of chronic stressors, such as poverty, illness and racism. Perhaps more importantly, he has translated those research findings into family-centered preventive intervention programs for rural African-American families that are currently undergoing rigorous testing.

“Dr. Brody has always been ahead of the times in asking cutting-edge research questions,” according to FACS Dean Sharon Y. Nickols. “He has succeeded in securing substantial external funding to carry out these projects, and his dissemination of the findings has earned the respect of his colleagues nationally and internationally.”

Brody joined the CFD faculty in 1976. In 1995, he was named director of the Center for Family Research of the Institute for Behavioral Research. The center is the site of $20 million of externally funded research supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Georgia Children’s Trust Fund.

Most recently, he was awarded a “Developing Center Grant” from NIMH to expand the center’s development, implementation and dissemination of family-oriented preventive interventions to rural African-American families, thus advancing the theory and methodology of prevention science.

Students interested in historic costumes and textiles soon will be able to view items from the FACS collection more closely thanks to a digitizing project under way by Patricia Hunt-Hurst (Associate Professor, Textiles, Merchandising and Interiors) and graduate student Clarissa Esguerra (Master’s Student, TMI). With funding from a UGA Learning Technogies Grant, Hunt-Hurst and Esguerra, along with help from undergraduate students, plan to digitize nearly 2,000 ethnic and historic costume and textile items. Each image will be accompanied by cataloguing information about the artifact. “This technology will provide students a unique method for the study of fragile historic artifacts,” Hunt-Hurst explained. “Students will have access to these images via CD-Rom throughout the semester both through classroom presentation and to conduct their own in-depth analysis of selected items for research projects.”