October 14, 2011
Core Institute, EverFi announce partnership
CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s Core Institute, which holds the country’s largest database about drinking and other drug use by college students, is now partnering with EverFi, Inc., the nation’s leading online alcohol education company.
The partnership promotes the integrated use of the partners’ services, bringing together the Core Alcohol and Other Drug Survey and the AlcoholEdu for College course. Thus, the Core endorses and promotes AlcoholEdu, the only intervention program that a National Institutes of Health-funded study found effective in reducing alcohol problems among college freshmen. In addition, as EverFi (formerly Outside The Classroom) works with its campus partners, the company will actively promote use of the Core survey to assess student substance use.
“With more than 20 years experience collecting and analyzing campus survey data, we are fully aware of the enormous toll that hazardous college student drinking takes each year. Our research shows that the freshman year is a particularly risky time and that is why we are pleased to endorse AlcoholEdu, which we now consider to be an essential component of campus prevention work. EverFi is a great partner for us,” said Jason Gillman, director of the Core Institute at SIU Carbondale.
With funding from the U.S. Department of Education, the Core Institute developed the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey to measure the use of alcohol and other drugs as well as attitudes and perceptions among college students at both two-year and four-year institutes.
The Core is currently revising and updating the survey and William DeJong, executive director for research and evaluation for EverFi and professor of community health sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health, is joining the advisory board. The board, led by long-time Core Institute collaborator H. Wesley Perkins, professor of sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, will oversee the survey revision that will assure the Core survey synchs with the AlcoholEdu surveys.
“The fact is that we have always urged our partner schools to use the Core Survey each year in order to gauge the progress they are making with their comprehensive prevention efforts,” said Brandon Busteed, EverFi executive vice president and AlcoholEdu founder. “What has us especially energized about our partnership with the Institute is what we can develop together for the field to improve students’ academic success and increase graduation rates.”
The AlcoholEdu course utilizes surveys asking students about their recent use of alcohol and other drugs. This provides EverFi with annual data for about one-third of first-year students at colleges and universities across the country. By working collaboratively, the Core Institute and EverFi will have a substantial database serving as the foundation for the design of effective, data-driven interventions to improve student academic success and college student retention.
The Core Institute, in addition to the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey, also offers the new Alcohol and Other Drug Social Norms Survey as well as several other cost-effective surveys measuring risky behavior among college students. The surveys form the basis of intervention products and services offered to college presidents and senior administrators, counselors, student affairs officials, health educators and other campus staff involved in the lives of students. For more information, look online at www.core.siuc.edu.
EverFi, Inc., with more than a decade of experience in the field of alcohol prevention as Outside the Classroom, is dedicated to teaching, assessing and certifying students in critical skills. Hundreds of campuses utilize the Alcoholmeter for College and AlcoholEdu for High School to address high-risk drinking problems among youth. EverFi’s Alcohol Prevention Coalition also offers colleges institution-wide solutions to the challenges threatening effective alcohol prevention.
EverFi also offers educational platforms focusing on financial literacy, student loan management, digital responsibility and cyber bullying, in use by more than 3,000 high schools and institutions of higher learning this academic year. To learn more, visit www.everfi.com and www.outsidetheclassroom.com.