College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Better with age

Institute for Social and Behavioral Research has a new focus - and a new director.
In the past three years, six faculty members associated with the Institute for Social and Behavioral Research (ISBR) have left their faculty positions to take jobs elsewhere.

Those faculty primarily concentrated their research efforts on youth issues.

While the faculty are greatly missed, ISBR is trying to use the change in personnel to broaden the Institute's focus.

"These changes in personnel within ISBR allow us a perfect opportunity to reach out to other departments," said Carolyn Cutrona, professor of psychology and the new director of the ISBR. "Because of the expertise of many of the faculty at ISBR we have always focused on children and family issues."

That has started to change.

Scientists and staff in ISBR make fundamental contributions to the understanding of human behavior, specifically in the context of family interactions, and are successful in applying that understanding to the development of programs and policies to enhance the well being of individuals, families and communities.

Cutrona says a recent call for proposals from the National Institute on Aging (NIA, an agency within the National Institute of Health) will allow ISBR to continue that focus, but also concentrate many of its efforts on Iowa’s aging population.

The NIA specifically wants proposals that look at the changing economic and health conditions of the elderly.

The ISBR hopes to do that by facilitating collaboration among faculty members in the Departments of Economics, Statistics, Psychology, Human Nutrition and Sociology.

"This is the perfect opportunity for us (ISBR) to reach out to other academic departments on campus and bring them together to collaborate on projects on aging," Cutrona said.

Some of the areas in which Cutrona sees future collaboration on projects include:
Initial meetings that ISBR has facilitated on the NIA call for proposals have attracted 20 different faculty from four different colleges.

"We have a lot of links to the various colleges," Cutrona said. "But we have very strong ties to LAS."

Five LAS faculty members (including Cutrona) have current grant funding through ISBR. Another seven or eight LAS faculty have plans to write grants through ISBR, some new to Iowa State, some longtime faculty members.

"One of the exciting parts about starting from scratch is working with so many new faculty from different disciplines," Cutrona said. "We want to broaden the range of disciplines that participate in a wide range of projects."

Initially Cutrona and ISBR will work with the newly affiliated faculty to further develop their grant writing skills. The Mentored Summer Grant Writing Program, a program designed as a follow-up to generic grant-writing workshops, offers individual mentoring while faculty develop their first grant proposal.

The mentor must have a successful track record in obtaining grants and must be a scholar in the area in which the young faculty member is working.

"We critique and review their work, making revisions wherever is necessary before we submit the grant to a funding agency," Cutrona said. "We are really trying to focus on the skills of the next generation of grant writers."

Cutrona has been affiliated with ISBR since her arrival at Iowa State in 1992. She was the associate director of the institute for two years and for the past year served as the interim director before being named ISBR director this past summer.

Approximately 27 faculty and research scientists, 15 graduate students and 170 professional employees and hourly staff work on ISBR's projects.

ISBR is affiliated with the Vice Provost of Research Office. For many years, it received significant funding from the Agricultural Experiment Station, but with recent budget cuts, alternative sources of funding had to be located.