Olweus Bullying Prevention Program founder honored

Published: August 4, 2011

CLEMSON — The American Psychological Association will honor Dan Olweus, adjunct faculty member in Clemson’s Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life, with the Award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Psychology at its national meeting Friday, Aug. 5, in Washington, D.C.

Olweus developed an internationally recognized bullying-prevention program while a psychology professor at the University of Bergen, Norway. The program is a comprehensive, schoolwide program designed for use in elementary, middle or junior high schools.

An endowed chair in his honor was established at Clemson in 2009, with Sue Limber as the first Olweus Distinguished Professor in the Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life. Limber leads efforts to implement the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program in the United States. It is being practiced in more than 6,000 schools nationally. She also has consulted on the national “Stop Bullying Now” campaign since its inception in 2004.

Limber also is being honored at the American Psychological Association national meeting with the Distinguished Career Award from the association’s division of psychologists in public service.

The association is honoring Olweus for his lifelong commitment to understand bullying among children and to create safe and humane school settings. He is recognized as a world expert and a pioneer in research on bully/victim problems. He is a global leader in raising public awareness about the nature and prevalence of bullying, its potentially serious consequences and the adult behaviors that allow bullying to occur.  

“Dan Olweus identified the problem of bullying and created a comprehensive solution,” said Gary Melton, Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life director. “Throughout his career, he has been guided by a concern for careful psychological inquiry and a commitment to the promotion of human rights.”

In 1970, Olweus began what is regarded as the world’s first scientific study of bully/victim problems, which was published as a book in Scandinavia in 1973 and in the U.S. in 1978. In the 1980s he conducted the first systematic intervention study against bullying, which documented positive effects of his Bullying Prevention Program. In the 1990s he conducted several large-scale intervention projects that also produced positive results and included researchers from Japan, England, the Netherlands, the U.S. and Norway.

Other honors Olweus has received include the award for outstanding aggression research from the International Society for Research on Aggression, the Spirit of Crazy Horse award for bringing courage to the discouraged by the U.S. Reclaiming Youth International organization, an award for outstanding publication and dissemination activity by the University of Bergen, the Nordic Public Health Prize by the Nordic Minister Council and the award for distinguished contributions to public policy for children by the international Society for Research in Child Development.

Olweus earned his doctoral degree in psychology at the University of Umeå, Sweden. He served as a psychology professor at the University of Bergen, Norway, until 1996 when he was appointed research professor of psychology in the Research Center for Health Promotion at the same university. Previously, he was director of the Erica Foundation, a training institute for clinical child psychologists in Stockholm, Sweden.

A doctoral student in Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life’s international family and community studies program also will be honored at the national conference.

Now completing her dissertation, Jill McLeigh will receive the Distinguished Student Award from APA’s division of psychologists in public service for her work to improve the wellbeing of immigrants and refugees, people with mental illnesses and families of young children. She is now a project director in the sociology department at the University of Maryland, where she coordinates research on the experience of men and women in the military and their families.

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