The Brown & White

A professor of special education won a $9.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of education to study behavioral disorders of teenage students.

Lee Kern, who is the program coordinator of the College of Education, was awarded the grant in early July. It is also the College of Education's largest grant to date.

The grant was given to the National Research and Development Center on Serious Behavior Disorders at the Secondary Level, a study led by Kern.

"What [Kern and her colleagues] got is one of the most highly competitive proposals. Everyone wanted that grant," Gary Sasso, Dean of the College of Education said.

Fifty percent of students suffer from a behavioral problem, Kern said, which are left improperly treated, can lead to dropping out of school, mental disorders or making poor life decisions.

With this statistic in mind, the study created by Kern and researchers from seven other universities uses a series of interventions intended to improve behavioral problems, as well as students' academic and social lives. The interventions also aim to help these students make good choices.

Examples of interventions include mentoring programs and reinforcing positive behaviors to reduce inappropriate ones, according to a university press release.

"The kids' disorders come from a complex place. Some are environmental, biological, or genetic," Sasso said. "It now depends how we act upon it. Our goal is to address all of these components through this package."

Participants in the study will be 500 ninth to 12th grade students in six states. Researchers picked schools in predominantly urban areas. In order to qualify for the study, the school's population had to be predominantly minority students.

"The key question is to look at different responses from different cultural groups," Kern said. "We look at what are the problems within the group, and then look at the connection with their school."

After the study's completion in five years, Kern and her colleagues hope to create a package of interventions to market to schools.

As the lead author of the grant application and its principal investigator, Kern is responsible for coordinating studies, organizing interventions and making sure each study is analyzed properly.

Edward Shapiro, director of Lehigh's Center for Promoting Research to Practice, also contributed to help support the study.

"If we could find a way to help these kids, it will benefit and empower everyone to be the best they could," Shapiro said.