The 1999 Laurence G. Brant Student Research Award was given to a Tennessee professor for her doctoral work at Iowa State.

Ardith Brunt, a registered dietitian and an assistant professor in the College of Human Ecology at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tenn., said she received the award for her research project concerning elderly women while she was a doctoral candidate at ISU.

Elisabeth Schafer, professor of food science and human nutrition at ISU, and Mary Jane Oakland, associate professor of food science and human nutrition at ISU, also contributed to the award-winning research project.

“I feel honored and somewhat surprised,” Brunt said. “I knew that my research was sound, but you never know what other submissions are.”

Brunt graduated in May from ISU with a Ph.D. in food science and human nutrition. She also received her bachelor’s degree in 1993 and her master’s degree in 1995 from ISU.

The research project was called “The ability of the ‘DETERMINE Your Nutritional Health’ checklist to identify at-risk anthropometric measures in rural, independently dwelling elderly women.”

For the study, Schafer and Oakland used a stratified random sample of 249 rural community-dwelling women who were age 65 or older.

They conducted the study through in-home interviews, which evaluated the ability of the DETERMINE checklist to identify those with at-risk anthropometric measures — interpreting the world in terms of human values and experiences, Brunt said.

“Dr. Elisabeth Schafer was very instrumental in my receiving the award,” Brunt said. “Her assistance was invaluable in writing the results of my research.”

“In order to qualify for this award, I had to submit a research paper for review,” Brunt said. “I also had to be a doctoral student at the time of the research.”

Brunt was awarded a plaque and $750 in Chicago on Nov. 8 from the gerontological section of the American Public Health Association.