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Abidin Early Career Award and Grant

The Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (SCCAP) is pleased to announce the creation of the first annual Richard “Dick” Abidin Early Career Award and Grant. The award is intended to recognize an early career psychologist who has established a program of empirical research that has had a major impact on the field’s understanding of psychopathology, prevention, assessment, treatment, or public policy relative to child and adolescent development or mental health. The grant is provided to enhance the awardee’s research program and/or to enable the awardee to initiate a new effort that extends their work.

The Abidin Early Career Award and Grant is named in honor of Dick Abidin, Ed.D, ABPP, a longtime member of SCCAP. Before SCCAP became Division 53, Dr. Abidin served in other leadership roles of Division 12, Section 1 including President and Member at Large. SCCAP is very thankful to Dr. Abidin for his guidance and service to SCCAP and is pleased to honor him by creating this award.

The awardee shall be no more than 10 years post-doctoral degree at the time of nomination. Elected officers of SCCAP are not eligible. Self-nominations will be accepted.

Application requirements:

  1. A 3-5 page, double-spaced research statement highlighting the contribution and impact of “their work” on the field to date and the potential of their ongoing research. Impact of work must be evidenced by documentable significant changes to practice or policy or conceptualization of youth mental health/illness. Numbers of publications, grants and other awards given to the applicant will not be considered evidence of impact. The successful awardee should address the question “what about the field of clinical child and adolescent mental health is improved as a result of my research to date?” and “If awarded, how will the awardee extend their work in a new or expanded research project?”
  2. Two letters of recommendation, one from a research colleague familiar with the nominee’s work and the other from an independent senior researcher in their area of work. Letters of recommendation may be no longer than 2 single-spaced pages
  3. A recent copy of the nominee’s CV
  4. A one-page budget statement of how the applicant would use the grant funds
  5. The applicant must be a member of Division 53 at the time of application
  6. Documentation should be sent as one PDF document to apadiv53@gmail.com using the nominee’s name and the award name in the title (e.g. Bob Smith Abidin Early Career Award and Grant)

Failure to conform to any of the application requirements (over page limit, not double-spaced, not submitted as a single PDF) will result in automatic disqualification of the application.

Important Dates:Applications are due December 1 (by 5:00p.m. CST) and the award announcement will be made in March. No late applications will be accepted.

The winner will receive a $20,000 grant to continue their research efforts. The award will be announced in the Society’s newsletter and website, the APA Monitor, and an announcement will be sent to the awardee’s university or affiliated workplace. The awardee will be expected to present a talk on their work at the annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in the year of the award. Travel expenses to attend the APA Convention will be provided by SCCAP.

Terms of the award: If award checks are written to an institution, college or university, no indirect costs allowed for this award. This is considered an unrestricted gift; the only requirement is that the funds must be used for expenses associated with the award recipient’s research.

Please direct any questions to Yo Jackson at yjackson@ku.edu.