News Release

UNC Institute on Aging Announces Winners of the Gordon H. DeFriese Career Development in Aging Research Awards

May 28, 2009

The UNC Institute on Aging is pleased to announce the 2009 winners of the Gordon H. DeFriese Career Development in Aging Research Awards. These annual awards honor Dr. DeFriese's thirty-year distinguished career in the conduct and development of research to improve the quality of lives of older North Carolinians, and especially his unwavering commitment to developing and supporting the careers of his colleagues. The awards are given to a junior faculty/staff member and a doctoral student from UNC Chapel Hill who demonstrate commitment to and outstanding promise in aging research. Each award is in the form of an account established in the recipient's home department to support his or her research activities.

Jennifer Craft Morgan, PhD, Research Scientist and the Associate Director for Research at the UNC Institute on Aging, is the recipient of the $5,000 Junior Faculty/Staff award. Her research focuses on jobs and careers, attempting to understand how population level, workplace level and individual level factors shape the experience and organization of work. She uses a life course perspective and pays particular attention to issues of social stratification related to aging and gender. Her work seeks to tie research, education and service together by focusing on the translation of lessons learned. This translation of research into lessons and tools is intended to help practitioners (e.g., employers, workforce and education planners, program implementers, workers) to build reasoned solutions to pressing problems.

In her position as an IOA Research Scientist, Dr. Morgan is currently co-principal investigator, with Thomas R. Konrad, PhD, for the Evaluation of the Jobs to Careers: Promoting Work-Based Learning for Quality Care Program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in collaboration with the Hitachi Foundation and the U.S. Department of Labor. She is also co-principal investigator, with Joanne Gard Marshall, PhD and Victor W. Marshall, PhD, of the Workforce Issues in Library and Information Science (WILIS) project funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services. She also serves as the Associate Director for the on-going intervention program: WIN A STEP UP (Workforce Improvement for Nursing Assistants: Supporting Training, Education and Payment for Upgrading Performance).

Dr. Morgan received her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at UNC-Chapel Hill where she also received her M.A. Prior to completing her Ph.D., she received two pre-doctoral National Research Service Awards (AHRQ-funded through the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research; NIA-funded through the Institute on Aging). In 2004, she was honored with the IMPACT Award from the Graduate Education Advancement Board of the Graduate School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for graduate research that has a positive impact in the state of North Carolina.

Susan Fletcher, MSW, ABD, is this year's doctoral student recipient of the $3,000 award. Ms. Fletcher is the Hartford Doctoral Fellow in the School of Social Work. Her research interests include staff training in long-term care settings, cultural congruency within long-term care communities, translational research, and spirituality and aging. She received her Master of Social Work from UNC-CH, a Master of Arts in Sociology and graduate certificate in gerontology from Cleveland State University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Psychology from Baldwin Wallace College. She also founded the non-profit organization, "Meet Me There, Inc" (MMT). MMT develops implements and evaluates intergenerational and intercultural interventions. In addition, she is the CEO of KinnecTech, Inc., a company that utilizes technology to enhance quality of life within long-term care settings. Ms. Fletcher anticipates defending her dissertation, "A Critical Examination of Fidelity, Adaptability, and Maintenance in a National Training Program for Staff in Long-Term Care" in Fall, 2009.