FY 2009 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, including faith-based 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.

Western State College of Colorado
Project Director: Greg Haase

Western State College of Colorado, WSC, is a small liberal arts college of 2,500 students in a remote area of the Rocky Mountains. To decrease underage and binge drinking rates which are significantly higher than the national average, WSC has proposed a comprehensive program consisting of education, alternative programming and consistent judicial policies and sanctions. Western’s Resist Alcohol Program aims to decrease the overall quantity and frequency of high-risk drinking by students, decrease alcohol-related incidents on campus and reduce recidivism rates for alcohol violations. The project will also increase students’ knowledge of Colorado, local laws and WSC policies related to alcohol use, and also provide students with social norms data on alcohol consumption. The project will include a comprehensive evaluation of the proposed program strategies.

University of California, San Diego
Project Director: Regina Fleming

Sexual assault prevention efforts that focus on the victim to avoid risky situations, or target men with messages such as “rape is a crime” have had minimal success in reducing sexual violence on college campuses. Prevention efforts which incorporate social norms marketing have shown promise. Building on previous research in this area, University of California, San Diego (UCSD) proposes a community approach sexual violence prevention project whose premise is to build a community which does not tolerate violence-supportive attitudes, beliefs and behaviors, and has the necessary skills to see opportunities to be an active bystander before, during and after sexual violence occurs.

The goal of the project, Modeling Bystander Intervention through Student Leaders and Social Norms: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Rape Prevention for First-Year Students, is to apply and evaluate two different strategies for their individual and combined effectiveness. These strategies will include the development and implementation of social norms marketing campaign and training influential leaders who will model positive bystander strategies as well as facilitate forums within their own peer groups. The existing Campus Violence Prevention Coalition will use an environmental management approach to review and revise campus infrastructure concerning sexual violence on campus.

University of Florida
Project Director: Virginia Dodd

High-risk drinking continues to represent the most significant health and social problem at the University of Florida. The campus-wide committee which addresses alcohol and other drug issues, aided by research conducted with UF students, concluded that students are more motivated by immediate and social consequences than long term health or legal consequences and student believe that benefits of drinking outweigh the costs. Additionally, students’ perceptions of college life are shaped by their close knit peer groups. The proposed project will implement a social marketing campaign, which will include UF trademark bold social marketing messages enhanced by new information regarding persuasion routes. The Elaboration Likelihood Model will guide message design to promote both the proximal and salient costs associated with high-risk drinking, and those of abstaining. The goals of the intervention, targeting primarily first year students, include reducing the high-risk drinking rate along with the associated negative consequences and countering misperceptions about high-risk drinking at UF.

University of Minnesota
Project Director: Sonya Brady

The project will implement a Web-based education program and individual-based intervention to prevent high-risk drinking. The Alcohol and College Life course utilizes a peer-education approach to develop and enhance students’ skills to balance their social life with academics, identify and utilize campus services, and form diverse friendship networks. The program will evaluate the impact and effectiveness of this course and various strategies in preventing high-risk drinking.

Clark University
Project Director: Debra A. Hines

The project will focus on decreasing sexual and dating violence by increasing knowledge and awareness of the problems and of services available, decreasing adherence to harmful myths and attitudes related towards violence, and increasing the willingness and efficacy of students to help potential victims of violence, through bystander programs. Working with the local domestic violence agency’s Coordinated Community Response College Subcommittee, Clark U’s program will serve as a model for the 12 other colleges in the College of Worcester Consortium.

SUNY Brockport
Project Director: Sylvia Tortora

The university will implement the Comprehensive High-Risk Drinking Prevention in a Residential Environment program, designed to address the characteristics of residential communities that unintentionally promote underage, excessive, and irresponsible alcohol use and abuse among college students who live on campus.

Michigan Technological University
Project Director: Donald Williams

Using an online course, workshops, and social norms marketing, the project focuses on reducing high-risk drinking among all students by increasing decision-making skills, promoting a healthier campus culture, and providing effective intervention to students who violate campus alcohol policies.

Washington State University
Project Director: Marie Adams

The project will enhance the university’s Campus Campaign Against Sexual Assault, with a primary goal of correcting misperceptions of social norms about sexual assault held by university freshmen as well as to empower them to prevent and respond appropriately to sexual assault situations.

Georgia Southern University Research and Service Foundation
Project Director: Dr. Charles Patterson

The project’s goal is to decrease high-risk drinking among the university’s fraternity and sorority members by educating the students about the dangers of alcohol abuse and correcting student misperceptions about peer alcohol use. Prevention efforts will be enhanced through the implementation of a mandated Alcohol Skills Training Program (ASTP) for all Greek members. A focus of the project will be on encouraging fraternity and sorority leaders to examine the role their modeling plays in promoting heavy drinking of members of their organizations.

University of Central Missouri
Project Director: Amy Kiger

Project objectives include the reduction of high-risk drinking and decreasing the number of students who miss class or perform poorly academically due to alcohol abuse through strategies aimed at increasing awareness of enforcement efforts, addressing perceptions of peer norms, and integrating brief motivational enhancement interventions into the Greek community. The project will build upon recent community success in using environmental management strategies to affect behavior and systems change.

Loyola College of Maryland
Project Director: Cindy Parcover

The project’s goals are to develop, implement, and evaluate a research-based alcohol intervention training model for all college community members working with first year students, to enhance social options for these students that are alcohol-free, and to strengthen campus and community alliances to promote a climate that de-emphasizes the role of alcohol.

University of Oklahoma
Project Director: Jennifer Crenshaw

This comprehensive program will use an experimental design to compare the efficacy of combining single-session group motivational interviewing intervention with online education. The project is focused on reducing high-risk drinking. It will also examine how motivational interviewing can be used more effectively in a group format and determining if this type of program would be more effective than the standard educational programs for at-risk students. The project will develop and market a Web site to house all of the university’s outreach, prevention, and intervention services related to alcohol in one online location.

University of Alabama
Project Director: Stuart Usdan

The project, Protecting our Pledges’ Safety, aims at reducing high-risk drinking and its associated consequences among Greek-affiliated students as they account for the majority of reported alcohol-related problems on campus. The strategies include the application of environmental interventions to reduce excessive consumption and the negative consequences of alcohol use. The evaluation of the program will use an experimental design to assess impact.

St. Cloud University
Project Director: Robert C. Reff

The project will focus on expanding and strengthening the existing community coalition and environmental approach to reducing underage drinking. The university will also reach out to the St. Cloud Technical College (SCTC) to reach a total of 11,000 students through a new model of prevention collaboration between the University, the SCTC, and the community – both on and off campus.

Youth First, Inc.
Project Director: Sidney Hardgrave

Real U is a collaborative project, including three colleges located in Evansville, Indiana, and designed to reduce high-risk drinking among college students by 5 percent. It will incorporate the following elements: a social norm marketing campaign to change misperceptions about alcohol use; a Web site tool called e-Chug that allows students to self-assess their drinking behaviors and receive personalize feedback to motivate positive change; and a BASICS program to provide one-on-one assessment and brief interventions for high risk drinkers.

Eastern Carolina University
Project Director: Jennifer Cremeens

A collaborative effort between a community college and a four-year institution, this project will focus on developing a social norms campaign addressing high-risk alcohol consumption and enhancing parental outreach to increase parent-child communication on the risks involved with high-risk drinking.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Project Director: Rashmi Tiwari

The MIT Alcohol-Related Violence Prevention Initiative (MARVIN) will address all social and environmental factors including individual, group, community and policy factors as they relate to alcohol-related violence. Strategies will include violence bystander empowerment training, the implementation of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Tier 1 strategies such as cognitive-behavioral skills training and norms clarification, and the use of technology to facilitate group student participation and discussion. One goal of the program is the dissemination of an alcohol-related violence program for colleges. The project will apply rigorous qualitative and quantitative evaluation for all phases of the program.

College of William and Mary
Project Director: Charles F. Gressard

To decrease high-risk drinking, the project will focus on members of Greek organizations, influencing the social culture and decreasing the negative consequences associated with alcohol abuse. It will also focus on strengthening the influence of the campus-and community-wide coalition, seeking to improve the coordination of services by the local prevention and treatment agencies. The project will implement an online Web education course, group training and intervention, using certified peer trainers and rigorous evaluation to measure project effectiveness.

Pacific Graduate School of Psychology
Project Director: Amie L. Haas

The purpose of this project will be to develop a pregaming-specific social marketing campaign and facilitated peer group intervention and testing its efficacy thorough a detailed evaluation. Pregaming, also known as front-loading, has become a trend on college campuses where students drink before going out to an occasion where alcohol is not served. Entering freshmen at Santa Clara University will be recruited into three groups to determine the most effective social norms strategy.

University of Arizona
Project Director: Melissa Vito

The goal of the project is to reduce interpersonal violence by providing bystander training and supportive normative and informational media to high-risk student groups and campus staff, faculty and administrators, and to infuse violence prevention into classroom curriculum. In addition, the project will increase campus/community/state partnerships to better address interpersonal violence on campus and disseminate information. As a result of the project, students and members of the campus community are expected to have an increased understanding of violence on campus, bystander interventions, and awareness of campus resources and methods of reporting of incidents.

Chowan University
Project Director: Romey Peavler

This project’s goals are to strengthen the university’s infrastructure for policy awareness and enforcement on alcohol use and abuse, increase parental notification, apply consistent policy violation consequences and referral procedures, and implement a social norms marketing campaign to promote environmental changes to influence healthier student decisions.

Illinois State University
Project Director: Kerri Calvert

The project will involve collaboration with four other campuses in the area and various local agencies including government, faith-based, and community groups working to reduce high-risk drinking. The use of data and environmental strategies will serve as a guide to develop more consistent standards for responding to high-risk drinking and alcohol related behaviors. The project will also aim at changing community perceptions of the serious risks and consequences affecting students on all four campuses.

West Park Hospital District
Project Director: Jay Otto

The West Park Hospital Prevention and Wellness Office will partner with Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming to reduce high-risk drinking among its students. The project will implement a comprehensive prevention approach including a school-wide social norms campaign to address misperceptions of alcohol use, an education program for all freshmen, and enhance the implementation of the the research-based model, Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students, by adding training and feedback assessment.

For more information, visit the Department of Education's Web site.