Katherine Ridge and Christina Mondi, doctoral students at the Institute of Child Development (ICD), have recently been awarded the Doris Duke Fellowship for the Promotion of Child Well-Being.
The fellowship, offered by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago and funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, aims to identify and develop a new generation of leaders who will create practices and policies that will enhance child development and prevent child maltreatment.
With the help of the fellowship, Ridge plans to investigate how characteristics of early relationships with caregivers influence children’s trusting decisions. In addition to pursuing a Ph.D. in child psychology at ICD, Ridge is also a student in the school psychological services M.A. and specialist certificate program in the Department of Educational Psychology. Ridge hopes to promote the development of positive relationships between children and adults. “With the support of the Doris Duke Fellowship, I am especially excited to use the knowledge gained from our research to inform school-based support groups for children and their relationships with others during my internship year,” Ridge said.
Mondi’s research and clinical work focuses on the promotion of socio-emotional learning with an emphasis placed on populations affected by adversity and trauma. Mondi hopes to better understand the role that early childhood intervention programs, such as the Child-Parent Center P-3 program, have on promoting lifelong wellbeing. As a Doris Duke Fellow, Mondi will use this opportunity to conduct research that will contribute to the growing national conversation about how to promote lifelong mental health. “I look forward to collaborating with and learning from other scholars who are passionate about promoting child wellbeing,” Mondi said.
Fellows receive an annual stipend of $30,000 for up to two years to support their dissertation and related research. Ridge and Mondi are two of 15 doctoral students to receive the fellowship this year.