Jennica Rebelez and Michael Furlong of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School won the California Association of School Psychologists (CASP) 2012 Michael Goodman Research Award. The award will be presented to her at the 2012 California Association for School Psychologists Convention to be held in Costa Mesa, CA, October 25-26. Rebelez and Furlong won for the paper “Danger, Climate, and Safety at School: Psychometric Support for a Progress Monitoring Instrument.”

The California Association for School Psychologists presents the Michael Goodman Memorial Research Award annually to an unpublished study that must specifically answer research questions that are new, unique, and not examined previously. The work must focus on a problem or question that clearly relates to the practice of school psychology. 

Jennica Rebelez is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology. Dr. Michael Furlong is a professor in the Department of Clinical Counseling, and School Psychology, and Rebelez’s advisor. This research was the focus of Rebelez’s second year research project for her doctoral candidacy exams and came from a school’s need to screen and monitor student experiences of victimization and perceptions of school climate, safety, and danger on campus and provide intervention services for students who were identified as at-risk.