Linda Collins, director of the Methodology Center, will present the 2018 Pauline Schmitt Russell Research Lecture, "Bringing Health and Education Interventions into the 21st Century,” at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 7, in the Bennett Pierce Living Center on University Park campus.
The event, sponsored by the College of Health and Human Development, is free and open to the public. A reception will be held at 3:30 p.m., and the public is invited to attend.
Collins’ presentation will focus on suggestions for changing the standard approach to development and evaluation of interventions.
“Although in the past 30 years there has been remarkable progress in many areas of technology, there has not been nearly as much progress in health and education interventions. These interventions are important because they have great potential to improve human health, academic achievement, and well-being,” Collins said. “My discussion will focus on new, engineering-inspired approaches for development and evaluation of health and education interventions. I believe strongly that the approaches I will discuss can produce much more effective, efficient, economical, and scalable interventions.”
Collins, also distinguished professor of human development and family studies and professor of statistics, is a researcher and expert in social, behavioral and health sciences. Her current work focuses on experimental and non-experimental design, particularly for building, optimizing, and evaluating health and education interventions.
The Schmitt Russell Research Lecture is delivered each year by the most recent recipient of the Pauline Schmitt Russell Distinguished Research Achievement Award, which recognizes the career-long research contributions of a distinguished faculty member whose research has had a profound impact on an identified field of study.
The award was established by Leo P. Russell, a 1941 industrial engineering graduate, to honor his late wife, Pauline Schmitt Russell, who received her home economics degree from Penn State in 1948.