Educational Psychology Students Receive Awards From Hogg Foundation - April 28th, 2010

The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health has honored Department of Educational Psychology doctoral students Adryon Burton Denmark and Johnathan Fowler with awards that will help them complete their academic research.

Each graduate student received the $1,500 Francis Fowler Wallace Memorial Dissertation Award, which is given to University of Texas at Austin doctoral students conducting research related to mental health.

Denmark is studying suicide among college students to determine why such a high percentage of suicidal students avoid seeking help. In an attempt to increase the effectiveness of campus suicide prevention resources, Denmark hopes to discover the factors that compel students to conceal suicidal thoughts. She will be analyzing data from a 2006 national survey of more than 26,000 students at 70 U.S. colleges and universities.

Fowler is researching the effectiveness of collaboration between school psychological professionals and parents whose children are undergoing school-based assessments. Fowler postulates that collaborative assessment methods may help prevent future challenges related to a student’s mental and physical health. Fowler will be studying different methods of collaboration to identify their effectiveness in improving parents’ understanding of their children’s abilities and challenges.

The Hogg Foundation’s grants and programs support mental health services, research, policy analysis and public education projects in Texas and is part of The University of Texas at Austin’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement.

The Department of Educational Psychology is in The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education and is ranked eighth nationally among public university educational psychology graduate programs by U.S. News & World Report magazine.

—Kay Randall, University Communications, 512-232-3910