The Irene E. Harms Graduate Scholarship Award

The Irene E. Harms Graduate Scholarship in the College of the Liberal Arts Endowment provides funds to support graduate students in the Department of Psychology’s Child Study Center. This endowment was distributed to the University from the Estate of Irene E. Harms in 2019. Irene E. Harms was a former faculty member in Penn State’s College of Economics, Department of Child Development and Family Relationships during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her area of research was child development and for a period of time she served as head of the Infant Development Group.

The Irene E. Harms Award recognizes outstanding graduate students who strive for academic excellence in one of three areas of child psychology: research supporting evidence-based practices; community-engaged research; and community outreach. Research supporting evidence-based practices involves efforts to use basic scientific knowledge to inform the design or evaluation of practices, programs, or policies. Policy evaluation and other policy work is included. Award recipients conducting community-engaged research are working in community settings or with community partners; outreach to communities can include clinical and/or educational projects.

Child Clinical and Developmental graduate students in the Department of Psychology can apply for this award. The Irene E. Harms Award can be used for a variety of research-related and community-engaged and community outreach activities and costs. This includes but is not limited to: collecting or analyzing data; eliciting expert consultation; article or grant writing with community partners; covering a portion of the student’s summer salary; professional development workshops or events; conducting focus groups; collecting qualitative data; software packages for analyzing qualitative data; paying wages for an undergraduate coder; etc.

See below for a list of our Irene E. Harms Graduate Scholarship Award recipients. For more information about this award, contact Laureen Teti at lot1@psu.edu.