USF St. Petersburg reels in the largest grant in campus history with $892,000 in federal funds to study child behavior.
By MONIQUE FIELDS
Published October 22, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - The University of South Florida St. Petersburg has received the largest grant in its history, raising the profile of the campus as it continues ambitious growth plans.
V. Mark Durand, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, received an $892,000 grant for research from the U.S. Department of Education. He and others will work 80 families - 40 in the Tampa Bay area and 40 in Albany, N.Y. - to investigate the best way to help parents address head banging, hand biting and other severe behavior problems in children.
"This is a real chance to improve practices and to take results which are theoretical and try to make it so that they improve the status of people's lives," said Christopher D'Elia, regional associate vice chancellor of research and community partnerships.
The five-year study will occur at the Center for Autism at USF in Tampa and at the State University of New York in Albany, where Durand established a similar program.
The grant aims to help parents relieve some of the frustrations that come with a challenging child and to alleviate some guilt parents feel for having a child with behavior problems.
The research is designed to help families of children who have tried many interventions and failed, and could transform the way psychologists and other professionals offer support to parents of special needs children, Durand said.
USF St. Petersburg students also will benefit from the grants and the subsequent research, he said.
When the campus recruited 51 new faculty members and 13 new administrators in 2003, there was an expectation that not only would the professors improve teaching and design new programs but also increase the research profile of the campus.
"This is kind of a signal that this is starting to happen," Durand said.
The grant Durand received has spurred other professors to apply for grants. It also will place another professor with a doctorate degree on the St. Petersburg campus, increasing the campus' academic profile.
"Just today, I got another proposal across my desk," D'Elia said. "It's practically every day I get another proposal. It's appreciable interest and it's very exciting."
As for the current grant, Durand has been researching how to help children with special needs for more than 20 years. He is the author of Abnormal Psychology, a textbook now in its fourth edition, and Sleep Better: A guide to Improving Sleep for Children with Special Needs. He also developed a treatment for children who have severe behavior problems.
In 1999, he created the Autism Distance Education Network, a distance-learning program that focuses on the origins and possible treatment of autism.
While studying autism and related disorders, Durand studied why children slap their faces, bang their heads or scratch themselves. The answer, he found, was the behavior was a form of communication.
Durand and Edward Carr, a professor at State University of New York, Stony Brook, found that a child might bang his head because he was frustrated with his work.
Children were observed and then given new ways to communicate. A child could point to a picture or push a button on a computer.
In about 60 percent of the cases, parents of children with behavioral problems can learn to communicate with their children through other means and understand why their children are exhibiting such behaviors.
But the remaining 40 percent of families become frustrated and give up on treatment for their children. That's where Durand's new research begins.
"These are forgotten families," Durand said. "These are families who either kind of withdraw or actually become what therapists might call resistant," Durand said.
During a pilot study, Durand found if parents are given a set of tools, they are more likely to cope with their children's behavior.
The grant will help Durand and others identify such families, provide them with optimism training that will help them look at how they view themselves and see how that interferes with their children's progress.
