Templeton Foundation awards Professor Stephen Schueller’s research team $1 million grant
One of the many research areas the John Templeton Foundation funds is character virtue development, so when the philanthropic organization put out a call focused on how to support youth in the digital age, Stephen Schueller answered.
The foundation answered back with a $1,036,714 million grant to the UC Irvine professor of psychological science and his research team.
Templeton’s Cultivating Character in the Digital Age funding call sought the creation of tools and resources to support character development, advance our understanding of how youth use technology, and spark conversations on how tech can be used for good.
One of nine of these new Templeton grants for projects focused on youth thriving in the digital age is “Addressing Risks in Online Spaces with Character Development through Digital Micro-Interventions” led by Schueller and Wake Forest psychology Professor Eranda Jayawickreme. Informatics Professor Katie Salen Tekinbaş of UC Irvine and philosophy Professor Valerie Tiberius of the University of Minnesota round out the research team.
“It really does bring together a dream team of people who can tackle this really interdisciplinary project,” Schueller says. “Our goal is to develop brief interventions focused on cultivating character in various online spaces. How can we help promote gratitude in social media? How can we use online games to make kids kinder people? How might we use online learning environments to help support perseverance?”
He acknowledges that popular opinion is that technologies are undermining youth’s character development.
“There’s been a lot of media hype about the challenges of social media and the downfalls it might have on youth mental health, but no one really is talking about the opposite potential, the power it could have for good,” Schueller explains. “Our project is really focused on how we can help build kids’ character in different online spaces like social media, online gaming, and online learning environments.”
He appreciates being part of a school that encourages collaboration not only within its departments but across the entire campus.
“The School of Social Ecology really has an ethos of trying to not just do research that stays in the laboratory but does research that impacts the community, that is really being all in for all and that is conducted broadly across UCI,” Schueller says. “There are strengths in all kinds of different areas. I do a lot of collaborations with folks in the Department of Informatics, where there are other researchers who are really interested in developing technologies to support health behavior, to change and support better mental health. So, what you see here is a fantastic environment to be able to bring in people who come from different disciplines, from different intellectual backgrounds and from different training backgrounds, but they are really trying to work together to solve really gnarly, wicked problems.”
“Addressing Risks in Online Spaces with Character Development through Digital Micro-Interventions” fits perfectly with the scholar’s own research interest.
“My research broadly looks at how we can use technology to scale mental health services and mental health interventions,” Schueller says. “And really thinking about mental health as not just clinical disorders, like depression and anxiety, but wellbeing. How do we help people get the most out of life, to be the person that they want to be? And how can technology help them get there?”
“This research squarely fits—trying to help kids, help youth be the best kids that they can be and really use these online environments as ways to bring out their best, to their best potential.”
— Matt Coker