FY 2005 Awardees: Grant Competition to Prevent High-Risk Drinking or Violent Behavior Among College Students

The Secretary of Education identified a national need to address high-risk drinking and violent behavior among college students. This grant competition’s goal is to provide funds to individual institutions of higher education, consortia thereof, public and private organizations, and individuals to develop or enhance, implement, and evaluate campus- and/or community-based prevention and early intervention strategies. Grantees focus attention on and develop solutions to prevent and reduce high-risk drinking or violent behavior among college students.

Barton County Community College
Project Director: Cathie R. Oshiro

The project’s primary goal is the reduction of risk factors that cause alcohol-related incidents involving the college’s students. Supporting objectives focus on the development and implementation of high-risk drinking prevention policies, sanctions, sanctions, training, and programming. Anticipated outcomes include corrected misperceptions of campus norms regarding alcohol use; reduction in the number of students who binge drink; a policy with clear behavioral expectations, responsibilities, and sanctions that are consistently and fairly enforced; a strong partnership with the community; and development of a core of trained student, employee, and community leaders. The project employs a social norms and environmental management model that incorporates strategies with demonstrated effectiveness as identified by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools and NIAAA’s Task Force on College Drinking.

Bowling Green State University
Project Director: Terry L. Rentner

The project’s efforts incorporate the social norms environmental approach and targets those groups who convey the most risk for alcohol-related harm: first-year students, athletes, and members of fraternities and sororities. The project also will introduce secondary interventions to focus on students who are classified as the highest risk drinkers. Secondary interventions include AlcoholEdu and the NIAAA Clinical Protocols to Reduce High-Risk Drinking in College Students, which is a population-based program that includes assessment training for emergency room staff, campus health center staff, campus and city police, university administration, athletic coaches, resident advisors, and faculty members.

College of William and Mary
Project Director: John D. Foubert

The project’s goal is to refine and evaluate a research-based rape prevention program to document fewer incidents of alcohol-related sexual assault committed by first-year men. By educating this group with a revised version of The Men’s Program, the projects expects desired changes in attitude improvement, lower likelihood of forcing sex, and fewer acts of sexual assault in year one, and stable declines in attitude and behavioral intent change through year two. A comprehensive dissemination plan will not only ensure presentation of this revised program to all first-year men on campus, but also to at least 50 colleges each year of the funded project.

Fort Lewis College
Project Director: Judith Vanderryn

This project’s two goals are to decrease substance abuse among students on and off campus and to develop a positive social environment in which students feel they have behavior choices other than substance abuse. To reach these goals, the project will implement a comprehensive web of interventions using a skills-based approach and addressing prevention on the three levels identified by researchers as important in a prevention program: universal (the entire campus community), selective (students at risk), and indicated (students already showing signs of a problem). These interventions range from training faculty to identify and approach potentially problematic students to offering a weeklong Outdoor Resiliency Program to incoming students identified to be at risk for problematic behavior.

Harvard University
Project Director: Paul Barreira

The Committee to Address Alcohol and Health at Harvard identified a variety of gaps in the university’s current efforts to address the issue of high-risk drinking among Harvard’s first-year students and athletes. The project’s primary objective is to fill those gaps by implementing an empirically supported high-risk alcohol prevention program targeting first-year students and student athletes. An additional benefit includes the adoption of a systematic gathering strategy that allows Harvard to continuously evaluate alcohol use and related problems among its students. A social norms campaign will target peer alcohol use misperceptions and a training model will prepare resident advisors, coaches, and student leaders to effectively communicate with first-year students and athletes about high-risk drinking.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Project Director: John Benedick

This project will expand MIT’s Screening and Brief Intervention Model to target the three major research-based high-risk population segments identified in the NIAAA Task Force report – first-year students, student athletes, and students affiliated with a fraternity or sorority, in addition to addressing the high-risk population segments identified through campus systems (e.g., judicial system, health services). The project provides outcome-based performance metrics for individual indicators including program effects on rates of heavy alcohol use, student recidivism for policy violations, alcohol-related health concerns, and incidents involving treatment of alcohol overdose, and the environmental impact of the program on campus, including impact on crime, vandalism, and other secondhand effects of heavy drinking upon peers.

Montana State University
Project Director: Jennifer L. Haubenreiser

The project’s primary goal is to reduce the existing level of high-risk drinking by the university’s students through the implementation of an evidence-based and comprehensive set of prevention strategies. The project incorporates four objectives, including implementation of an online survey to incoming freshmen; expansion of alcohol screening and brief intervention services at the student health service and online; creation and enhancement of alcohol-free social and recreational options; and enhancement of efforts of the Bozeman Community Action Coalition.

North Country Community College
Project Director: Gail R. Rice

Using thorough and continuous assessment of student attitudes and awareness, the project will train faculty and staff in program interventions, normative messaging, presentation of alcohol-free events, development of peer educators, modeling strategies to empower proactive bystanders and educating students to services available and the health, legal, and academic consequences of high-risk drinking and violence. Using mandatory and voluntary structured workshops, normative messages, and curriculum infusion, the project targets residential students, student athletes, and first-year students.

Rutgers University
Project Director: Linda C. Lederman

The project’s goal is to develop, implement, and evaluate prevention strategies to advance effectiveness in continuing to change the culture at Rutgers away from one in which high-risk drinking is considered inevitable to one that increasingly supports and encourages healthy behaviors. The primary objectives are to pilot test, implement, and evaluate a brief intervention strategy; design a coordinated usage of the intervention strategy with classroom technology that allows students to immediately view their responses to questions as a group; design a series of experiential activities in conjunction with the classroom technology; design and pilot test communication and alcohol-related skills training for first- and second-year students and students in recovery; disseminate experiential activities and instructional manuals; use quantitative and qualitative data collection methods to evaluate outcomes; and extend a social norms campaign to three additional Rutgers campuses.

South Dakota School Mines of Technology
Project Director: Patricia G. Mahon

This project’s goals and objectives are to increase the number, awareness, ad participation of alcohol-free social and recreational options including late night and weekend programs; develop a comprehensive alcohol abuse prevention program; develop and implement an information and education program regarding the impact of high-risk drinking on future career options; and develop skills of bystanders to recognize and intervene with problem behaviors. Intended outcomes include improved accuracy of student perceptions of alcohol use behaviors among college students and decreased alcohol consumption and negative consequences related to alcohol use; and implementation of a referral program through the Rapid City Police Department and creation of an early intervention program for offenders.

University of Albany, State University of New York
Project Director: Dolores Cimini

The objectives of the first-year student-focused project are consistent with the NIAAA Task Force on College Drinking recommendations and will reduce student alcohol use and negative consequences that result from excessive use. This project contributes to the development of innovative and targeted prevention strategies focused on a group identified through research as high-risk by clarifying how well individual, group, and Web-delivered screening and brief intervention strategies work with college students who are identified and referred early in their college careers. Outcome and process measurement methods will be used to assess the effects of the interventions both on the individual student and, more broadly, across time upon campus crime rates, student referrals to the judicial system, alcohol-related health concerns, and incidents involving the treatment of alcohol-related emergencies.

University of Arizona
Project Director: Melissa Vito

The project’s goal is to reduce high-risk drinking and related negative consequences among the university’s first-year students. Reductions will be achieved by providing mandatory online screening and immediate personal feedback to all incoming freshmen; testing the efficacy of an online versus class diversion program for students with alcohol infractions; providing cognitive-behavioral skills training, norms clarification, and motivational enhancement to students receiving a second alcohol infraction; correcting misperceptions of alcohol use and behavioral norms through a campuswide social norms media campaign; increasing knowledge about alcohol-related policies and laws; limiting access and availability of alcohol to all first-year and underage students through law enforcement and community partnerships; and disseminating findings through meeting and publications.

University of California, San Diego
Project Director: Nancy J. Wahlig

The project’s goal is to implement two different strategies and evaluate their individual and combined effectiveness in reducing sexual violence. The strategies include developing and implementing a campuswide social norms marketing campaign, and developing and conducting single- and mixed-gender workshops targeting first-year students. Activities include campuswide surveys of male and female students to assess their knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about sexual violence on campus, and creation of a social norm marketing campaign based on the survey’s results. The Campus Violence Prevention Coalition also will work on the project team to review and revise campus infrastructure concerning sexual violence on campus.

University of Hawaii
Project Director: Nancy A. Stockert

The project’s goal is to reduce high-risk alcohol consumption and its consequences among freshmen in residence halls at the University of Hawaii. The project’s objectives are to train in early identification and referral of at-risk freshmen residents and provide brief intervention/referral services, using motivational interviewing and other techniques from the BASICS program; widely publicize alcohol policies; develop and publicize a graduated system of sanctions and provide consistent and rapid enforcement of these sanctions; provide basic norms and skills information for all residents through train-the-trainers sessions for resident advisors; unite social marketing principles with the social norms approach, creating small student groups to act as peer advisors and to develop and evaluate mass media materials and alcohol-free activities; encourage faculty to become involved; and provide leadership for coordinated efforts on campus and advocacy for specific community changes.

University of Michigan
Project Director: Patrice Flax

The project will launch a Residence Community Housing Initiative to train resident advisors and first-year student peer opinion leaders on alcohol information and prevention strategies. Through role-play scenarios, students will learn how to initiate opportunistic conversations and intervene with other first-year students. A second project component, Ann Arbor Campus Community Conversations, will utilize principles of grassroots community organizing to bring together key constituents from the campus and community to develop strategies to reduce high-risk drinking and its negative consequences. The result of these events is a plan that serves as the basis for a new collaborative model to reduce alcohol abuse and negative consequences on campus and in the neighboring community.

University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Project Director: Rebecca Caldwell

The project’s goals include challenging the culture of masculinity that perpetuates high-risk drinking, eliminating gender-biased advertising that perpetuates high-risk drinking (e.g., ladies night), and identifying and reducing gender-specific risk factors for high-risk drinking. Program components include gender-specific messages in first-year seminar classes; a summit on masculinity, health, and leadership; a learning community; a gender-based social norms campaign; and a reduction in gender-based alcohol advertising in the Wilmington community. Expected outcomes include a reduction in the level of high-risk drinking and alcohol-related consequences among students and the development of a program that can be implemented at colleges and universities nationwide.

University of Oklahoma
Project Director, Suzette Dyer

The project’s goals are to reduce the number of first-year students engaging in high-risk drinking, decrease the number of alcohol-related incidents, change the perception of the campus culture among first-year students, and provide small group social norm programs for all first-year students. The project will use a Classroom Performance System designed by e-Instruction to electronically collect and utilize group norms for each small group session. These norms will be stored and analyzed to learn more about first-year student alcohol use and better tailor social norm programs. Participants will be asked to evaluate the small group program immediately after the presentation and at 3-, 6-, and 12-month intervals. Lastly, focus groups will be conducted to collect qualitative data regarding students’ perceptions of the project.

University of Southern California
Project Director: Melora A. Sundt

The project focuses on a comprehensive program prevention college men’s violence toward women, and integrates two leading research-based strategies: peer-based, men-only workshops addressing ways in which men can reduce violence against women, and a social norms marketing campaign. The peer-based programs will be run by a 20-member student men’s leadership group and mentored by 10 faculty and staff members. By engaging the student leaders in the workshop and campaign design and delivery, the project expects to significantly reduce targeted male students’ support for rape myths; significantly increase targeted male students’ anti-violence behaviors; and reduce the rate of violence committed by all male students against women as measured by multiple campus offices.

University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire
Project Director: Jodi M. Thesing-Ritter

This project involves collaboration among the university’s staff, Eau Claire City-County Health Department, local law enforcement, alcohol distributors in Eau Claire, parents, and students. The project uses seven interlocking strategies to reduce drinking, including an orientation initiative with parents and first-year students; increased enforcement of drinking age laws; strengthening and promoting campuswide alcohol policies; targeted education on personal liability related to high-risk drinking; social norms marketing campaigns; and faculty development workshops for curriculum inclusion of alcohol issues coupled with faculty and students collaborative research.

Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Project Director: Steven W. Clarke

The project has three primary aims: design 21st birthday cards, a planning guide, and other supportive materials; determine the relative effectiveness of 21st birthday interventions on men versus women, and low-risk, moderate-risk, and high-risk drinkers; and evaluate the large-scale impact of a theory-driven and evidence-based revision of a 21st birthday intervention. One aspect of the project is the 21st Birthday Planning Guide, which is provided to students one month prior to their 21st birthday. It is expected this intervention will be effective because epidemiological research shows that students who wish to moderate their alcohol consumption during their birthday celebration are in need of the knowledge and tools necessary to successfully accomplish this task. The project is guided by three research-supported theories: social influence theory, theory of planned behavior, and the health belief model.