An Iowa State graduate student was awarded a minority fellowship to research issues in mental health.

The American Sociological Association awarded Eric Stewart, graduate student in sociology, the fellowship last month. The National Institute for Mental Health will provide more than $14,600 for Stewart’s research.

He said the association offered the fellowship to increase minority participation in mental health research. The fellowship will extend over the next school year and is renewable.

Unlike an assistantship where graduate students conduct research under the guidance of a professor, Stewart said a fellowship will grant him independence.

“The fellowship gives me the freedom to do research on mental health without working under a professor,” he said.

Stewart will examine 800 African American families who were chosen to participate in the study, 400 from Iowa and 400 from Georgia. He will be looking at predictors of aggressive behavior in young children, violence in peers, violent behavior in parents, styles of parenting and types of discipline administered among other areas.

Ron Simons, professor of sociology, said the National Institute for Mental Health considered grades, the quality of research, number of papers published, submitted articles and future research plans in selecting a candidate for the fellowship.

“Eric is an excellent scholar. He has really good ideas and writes well. He can take advantage of this fellowship,” said Simons, associate director of the Institute for Social and Behavior Research at ISU.

Stewart has worked with Simons over the past year and a half studying how delinquency in children affects the psychological well-being of family members.

“Delinquency predicts conflicts in parenting and legal sanctions have a stronger impact on family interactions,” Stewart said.

Stewart said he joined the study because he has seen its effects firsthand.

“I have seen a number of families with delinquent children and have seen the problems that it causes,” he said.

The desire to quell crime is what attracted Stewart to the field of sociology.

“I wanted to look at ways in preventing crime, especially black-on-black violence,” he said.

Raised in Miami, Stewart said his high school was geared more toward discipline than toward giving students a quality education. He said he learned proper language, grammar and mathematical skills during his undergraduate career at Fort Valley University, a historically black college in Fort Valley, Ga.

He obtained his master’s degree in sociology at Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., studying violence caused by firearms.

Stewart, currently a research assistant, is seeking his doctorate from ISU.

For his dissertation, Stewart is studying the predictors of childhood aggression in an African American sample. He will be using some of the information gained from the fellowship study for his paper.