Michael Awad, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatry, has been awarded the Loren Frankel Student Research Award for Division 51, Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinities, of the American Psychological Association (APA).
The award honors a graduate student, post-doc, or new psychologist who has recently completed and defended a dissertation pertaining to boys, adolescent males, men or masculinity.
Awad’s study focused on the development and validation of a psychometric tool called the Multicultural Gender Roles Scale (Male Version), which measures the unique processes and impacts on psychosocial wellbeing that men of color experience in their adoption and negotiation of various, often conflicting, gender roles. Identifying these processes provides a framework for understanding, assessing, and improving gender role functioning for men of color in a society that has erroneously defined and negatively stereotyped their masculinity, Awad said.
The award committee noted Awad’s study stood out in its alignment with this year’s Presidential Initiative, Holding Space for Boys and Men of Color.
Awad was nominated for the Frankel Award by Derrick Gordon, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, and his Columbia mentor, Marie Miville, PhD, who developed the Multicultural Gender Roles Theory.
Highlights of Awad’s research will be honored in a listserv announcement to the division. Awad will also be honored in an awards ceremony the 2021 convention in San Diego.
Awad is a 2019 graduate of the Yale Department of Psychiatry's Doctoral Internship in Clinical & Community Psychology.