Sarah Nightingale, assistant professor of social work, was awarded a research grant this July from the Center for Institutional Courage, which aims to combat institutional injustices in cases of abuse on college campuses.

The Institutional Courage Research Grant program is highly competitive. This year’s grants are valued at $50,000 and go to 17 scholars at 11 universities.

“It is encouraging to see researchers focusing on this important and developing area of institutional betrayal research,” said Jennifer Freyd, president and founder of the Center for Institutional Courage.

“The Center for Institutional Courage is all about supporting research that's looking to find antidotes to betrayal,” said Nightingale.

Nightingale will use the grant funding toward a project she is conducting with Molly Driessen, assistant professor of social work at Providence College. The project includes an advisory board, composed of five survivors of sexual abuse on college campuses.

“We are using the funds to support a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project where we will investigate how college campuses in the United States can respond to sexual assault with courage, from the perspective of survivors,” said Nightingale.

“What is innovative about our research is that one of the voices left out of that discussion very frequently is from survivors on campus,” she continued.

“(Researchers) will talk to experts like me or advocates or administrators, and they’ll talk a lot to lawyers, but students and student survivors are often left out.

“This is the first time I’ve been involved in this type of project, and I haven’t really seen a project like this out there before,” she said. Nightingale received a high number of applicants to be on her advisory board.

“Despite everything they’ve been through with their college campuses and being from across the country, (the applicants) really want to make college better for everyone.”

Nightingale’s professional background prepared her to approach institutional courage from a survivor’s perspective. “I worked as an advocate for more than 10 years before I went back and got my Ph.D.,” she said.

“(Driessen and I) want to know more about how people see justice and how and when universities are meeting people’s needs in terms of justice.”

In her previous research, Nightingale has investigated why victims of campus abuse often do not feel that the appropriate action is taken on their behalf.

“There is a legal framework to how (universities) respond,” she said. “I want all our universities to be compliant, but compliance alone does not meet the needs of our students.

“It’s about organizational change, and that’s difficult work. It really raises the bar for the expectation of administrators.”

This fall, Nightingale will also teach a course called “Social Work 345: Sexual Violence in Higher Education.” The course is offered as an elective and will involve topics related but not limited to Nightingale’s research.