{"id":121917,"date":"2021-01-26T10:30:34","date_gmt":"2021-01-26T15:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/?p=121917"},"modified":"2021-01-26T10:30:34","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T15:30:34","slug":"character-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/2021\/01\/26\/character-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Character Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Brown Urban and Miriam Linver are proving that doing the right thing pays off.<\/p>\n

The two professors of Family Science and Human Development, who run the Institute for Research on Youth Thriving and Evaluation (also known as the\u00a0RYTE Institute<\/a>), have been awarded multiple grants over the better part of the past two decades allowing them and their partnering agencies and academic institutions to study how to help adolescents thrive \u2013 not just economically and academically \u2013 but as human beings, developing self-knowledge, resilience and character.<\/p>\n

Most recently, they\u2019re in the midst of wrapping up a $6.2 million Boy Scouts of America (BSA) National Character Initiative grant funded by the Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation. The grant supported the second phase of an ongoing BSA national character initiative project that is focused on understanding the role adults play in youth character development.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve also just received a grant for a project called \u201cGreater Good in Action 2.0: Making the Science of Character Virtue More Practical, Engaging and Impactful,\u201d working with the\u00a0Greater Good Science Center<\/a>\u00a0at the University of California, Berkeley to study\u00a0Greater Good in Action<\/a>, an online program that provides evidence-based practices to develop skills such as mindfulness, empathy and gratitude.<\/p>\n

Numerous other grants have been completed or are in the mix, with the RYTE Institute\u2019s work taking on international projects from Brazil to Scotland to Kenya to Pakistan and partners including Cornell University (Cornell Office for Research on Evaluation<\/a>), Tufts University (Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development<\/a>),\u00a0Character Scotland<\/a>,\u00a0Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia<\/a>, and\u00a0American Institutes for Research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over the decade-plus life of the Institute (which started as a lab), Linver and Urban have garnered more than $12 million in grants.<\/p>\n

The work of the RYTE Institute is to help youth thrive by partnering with organizations that present opportunities for young people, and by working to explore developmental science, and program evaluation and planning from a systems science perspective in order to replicate successful practices.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are essentially providing the research support for studying the programs,\u201d says Urban, who adds, \u201cWe don\u2019t want to be outsiders coming in imposing a research framework and then disappearing. Instead we want to build capacity\u201d in the partnering institutions.<\/p>\n

In the case of the\u00a0Youth Ready<\/a>\u2013Evoke<\/a>\u00a0program, for example, the RYTE Institute is working to build capacity within Honduras through its Building Character in Youth through a Game-based Solution to a Community Challenge.<\/p>\n

\"Jennifer
Jennifer Brown Urban (right) working with Youth Ready-Evoke grant partners at World Vision in Honduras. Photo taken February 2020.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Youth Ready\u2013Evoke<\/a>\u00a0is a collaboration with the international humanitarian organization World Vision (Youth Ready) and the World Bank (Evoke) helping youth in Honduras who are at risk for migration to develop social, emotional skills and life skills, and then either pursue additional education, get a job or start their own business.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re working with Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras and we\u2019ll be working with their students and training their students on how to do all the steps of the research project,\u201d says Urban.<\/p>\n

In the case of the Boy Scouts of America grant, Linver and Urban wound up helping the organization reevaluate at a time that coincided with the national organization\u2019s bankruptcy, which was filed so that it could equitably compensate victims of abuse while continuing the mission of scouting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe overarching goal for that project was to understand the relationship between adult training and experience, and youth outcomes \u2013 what makes a good adult leader, essentially. However, because we had such an opportunity for data collection, we expanded the scope of the project [for] a strong focus on diversity, equity and inclusion,\u201d Urban says. \u201cIn the period of time that we were working with them, they admitted transgender youth.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Read preliminary RYTE Institute reports from the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) National Character Initiative study here.]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe also were very involved at the time girls were admitted to Cub Scouts and Scouts BSA,\u201d she adds. \u201cBasically, we presented and shared the body of research on single gender versus coeducational experiences and the research literature overwhelmingly supports mixed gender experiences.”<\/p>\n

\"\"
A grant awarded to the RYTE Institute from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc., Global Partnerships for Advancing Character Program Evaluation (PACE Global), is helping front-line health workers in Pakistan utilize the humanities as a tool for teaching about social, emotional and character attributes. Photo taken December 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Through these and other grants, the RYTE Institute has provided numerous educational opportunities for Montclair State students.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother strength of the Institute is that we have so many different disciplines represented,\u201d Urban says, listing Family Science and Human Development, Sociology, Education, Public Health, Counseling, and Psychology.<\/p>\n

Linver adds, \u201cPlus Social Work and many subfields within Psychology, including Developmental, Industrial, Organizational, Social, Educational Psych. Everything is or has been represented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Institute staff includes post-doctoral fellows, research scientists, doctoral students, master\u2019s students, undergraduate students and college graduates thinking about getting their master\u2019s degree or post-master\u2019s thinking about getting their doctorate.<\/p>\n

Linver points out that the data continues to be used long after grants have ended: \u201cOur project in Scotland (Inspiring Purpose) from a few years ago is concluded, and we\u2019re not getting current funding on it, but we\u2019re still learning a lot from those data and it\u2019s benefiting our students.\u201d She noted that at least one student is currently building her dissertation on the Inspiring Purpose data.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of students who are shaped by the experience that they have within the Institute in terms of their interests,\u201d says Linver.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Urban and Linver say that the RYTE Institute is fostering youth-thriving globally as well as providing world-class educational opportunities for students at Montclair State \u2013 another form of youth-thriving right here in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s our goal,\u201d says Urban.<\/p>\n

Story by Staff Writer\u00a0Mary Barr Mann<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research institute studies how to help youth develop mindfulness, gratitude, empathy, character and more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":121918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-23_college-news-and-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/cchl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}