Professor named
Researcher of the Year

The National Council on Rehabilitation Education (NCRE) announced that Sonja Feist-Price, an associate professor in the Special Education and Rehabilitation Counseling Program, was named researcher of the year for 2001. The award is given in recognition of her work developing a community-based HIV prevention program for adolescent females in housing developments in Louisville, and a school-based HIV prevention program for adolescents in South Africa.

Sonja Feist-Price, an associate professor in the Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation Counseling (EDSRC), received news that she had been named the 2001 National Rehabilitation Researcher of the Year from John Benshoff, NCRE president. The NCRE, headquartered in the University of California at Fresno, is a council dedicated to the improvement of rehabilitation services for persons with disabilities through quality education and rehabilitation research. The researcher of the year is awarded to an individual who recently made a significant contribution to the rehabilitation literature.

Feist-Price was nominated for the award by Ralph Crystal, the Wallace Charles Hill Professor of Rehabilitation Counseling and coordinator of rehabilitation counseling. “Dr. Feist-Price has made a significant contribution to the rehabilitation literature in the area of HIV/AIDS prevention…she more than meets the criteria for this distinguished award,” Crystal wrote. She also received support from Bill Berdine, chair of the EDSRC department; Professor Rick Zimmerman, a mentor and collaborator on HIV prevention research projects; and Stan Rubin, her major professor at Southern Illinois University.

Feist-Price is a member of an international HIV prevention research team at the University of Kentucky that is working on the development of interventions designed to prevent the spread of HIV infection. At

What distinguishes her work is the emphasis on prevention rather than rehabilitation. “So much of rehabilitation tends to focus on working with people after something disabling has occurred. My work as part of this research team is to intervene before a person becomes infected or debilitated in some way,” Feist-Price said.

The award was presented at the NCRE annual conference in Tucson, Arizona, in February.

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