School of Social Work Researchers Receive Grant

Three School of Social Work professors, Kameri Christy, Alishia Ferguson and Marcia Shobe, have received a grant for $100,000 from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation to evaluate Youth Individual Development Accounts for a program of the Economic Opportunity Agency of Washington County.

Individual Development Accounts are, essentially, savings accounts with contributions of low-income individuals in the program matched by another source of funding, in this case by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. Of the $100,000, the Washington County Economic Opportunity Agency will use $48,000 to fund the youth accounts.Youth Individual Development Accounts encourage the use of accumulated account funds for higher education.

Yvette Murphy-Erby, director of the School of Social Work, noted the grant is consistent with the priority the Don Bobbitt, president of the University of Arkansas System, has placed on the need for more Arkansans to get post-secondary degrees and for researchers and scholars to take a leading role in forming partnerships toward this end. She stressed that, “this is a model partnership opportunity” supportive of the president’s priority.