B.F. Skinner Foundation - Student Research
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Science
The B. F. Skinner Foundation now supports research awards for students at two behavioral organizations: Florida Association for Behavior Analysis (FABA) and the California Association for Behavior Analysis (CalABA). The funds are given yearly.
Initially, in 2006, the scholarship fund award was five hundred dollars. In 2007 the scholarship fund was increased to one thousand dollars. The students who received the awards were Jeanne Donaldson in 2006 and Griffin Rooker in 2007. Ms. Donaldson used her scholarship funds to conduct a study on increasing physical activity with overweight and obese adults. The scholarship allowed her to purchase five heart rate monitors that recorded calorie expenditure. These monitors allowed Ms. Donaldson to use calorie expenditure as a dependent measure for physical activity. Mr. Rooker used his scholarship funds to conduct a study that looks at assessing and treating problem behavior occasioned by dental procedures. The treatment will be video modeling.
FABA has the discretion to award any portion of the scholarship to one or more students within any calendar year. Any funds not awarded stay with FABA to be awarded at some future date. FABA came up with a fine set of scholarship application criteria. Other organizations are now interested in using it as a model for their own BFS Foundation scholarship efforts.
In 2007 CalABA was awarded five hundred dollars for a research award to students. CalABA has set up an award mechanism following the FABA model. The first award is scheduled to be awarded in winter or spring of 2008.
As funds permit, more scholarships will be made available to students. It is an obvious cliche that developing effective research endeavors in young scholars is the life blood of our science.
