Alan Sroufe, professor emeritus at the Institute of Child Development, has been selected as this year's recipient of the Division 7 Developmental Psychology Mentor Award by the American Psychological Association. The award honors individuals who have contributed to developmental psychology through the education and training of the next generation of research leaders in developmental psychology. The award recognizes individuals who have had substantial impact on the field of developmental psychology by their mentoring of young scholars. APA also notes in the award letter, "This award has special meaning compared to some of the other awards because it not only indicates the impact on the field of one's individual research career but also the continued impact through the next generation of developmentalists, as well as one's outstanding mentoring." The award will be presented at the APA 2013 convention in Hawaii.

Nicki Crick, Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Psychology in the Institute of Child Development, appeared on Minnesota Public Radio to talk about relational aggression, a form of bullying that may have been a factor in the suicide death of 7th grader Rachel Ehmke of Mantorville, Minnesota. The story can be found on the MPR website here:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/05/09/relational-aggression/

Read about The Race to the Top, Promise Neighborhoods, and Investing in Innovation federal grants that focus on children at risk and aim to benefit children statewide by building an infrastructure for early education. Connect Magazine, College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota, Spring 2012 issue.

Ann Masten, professor in the Institute of Child Development, has been named a recipient of the President's Award for Outstanding Service. In the award announcement, President Kaler says: "The award recognizes recipients who have gone well beyond their regular duties and have demonstrated an unusual commitment to the University and those of us who study, teach, and work here." The office of the president presents the award every spring to recognize active or retired faculty or staff members who have performed exceptional service to the University, its schools, colleges, departments, and service units. Congratulations, Ann!

On Tuesday, May 1, Ann Masten, professor, ICD, sat down with Kerry Miller on MPR's The Daily Circuit and Steven Southwick, professor of psychiatry at Yale, to talk about The Science Behind Fostering Resilience. You can listen to the program on the MPR website at: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/05/01/daily-circuit-resilience

ICD associate professor Stephanie Carlsonhas been awarded a $1.2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, 2012-15, for Fostering Self-Control in Children: Strategies that Facilitate Working, Waiting, and Emotion Regulation. Co-PIs are Angela Lee Duckworth, University of Pennsylvania, and Ethan Kross, University of Michigan.

Rebecca Shlafer (Institute of Child Development, Ph.D. '10) was named the SAHM/Mead Johnson Nutritionals New Investigator of 2012 at the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine's (SAHM) Annual Meeting, Impact of Trauma on Teens: Building the Safety Net on March 14-17 in New Orleans. Shlafer was invited to present her paper, The Impact of Family and Peer Protective Factors on Girls' Violence Perpetration and Victimization at the meeting.

The New Investigator Award was established to recognize professionals who, through excellence in research, have furthered the Society's goals to promote development, synthesis, and dissemination of scientific and scholarly knowledge unique to the development and health care needs of adolescents.

Congratulations to current ICD doctoral students Rowena Ng and Amanda Wenzel for being awarded prestigious 3-year NSF Graduate Research Fellowship awards, as well as to Sandra Ahumada-Farias and Caitlin Cole who received Honorable Mentions. This annual national competition is very tough, and both Fellowship awards and Honorable Mentions are a great testament to the outstanding quality of an applicant's work and ideas.

On March 24, Housing & Residential Life will sponsor the Live Green Film Festival in the STSS building. The films, "Tapped," an unflinching look at the business of bottled water; "Fresh," new thinking about what we're eating; and "Mother Nature's Child," growing outdoors in the media age, will each screen at 12pm and 2pm. The Institute of Child Development and the Shirley G Moore Lab School will facilitate a discussion following the 12 pm screening of "Mother Nature's Child."

Recently the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded a grant to Ann Masten, professor in the Institute of Child Development (ICD), J.J. Cutuli (ICD Ph.D. '11; research director of Intelligence for Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania) and Janette Herbers (ICD Ph.D. '11; post-doctoral fellow at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey) to study the impact of different approaches to housing assistance on the educational wellbeing of children and youth who experience homelessness in Minneapolis. The project will look at school outcomes for homeless children whose families agreed to be randomly placed into one of three assisted housing interventions.

"This is a unique opportunity made possible by partnerships with Minneapolis Public Schools and HUD, who share a commitment to helping these at-risk students succeed," says Cutuli, director of the project.