Kleiber Wins Highest National Honor For Leisure Research Douglas Kleiber, professor of recreation and leisure studies, will be nationally recognized this month for research excellence during a career that has spanned three decades. Kleiber will receive the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Award for Excellence in Recreation and Park Research – the highest honor bestowed by the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) – at that group’s annual conference Oct. 21-25 in St. Louis, MO. Colleagues say his work has not only made an impact on the ways in which leisure is conceptualized within a social-psychological framework, but has influenced the way an entire generation of leisure scholars thinks about leisure’s role in terms of identity formation, social psychology and health. Kleiber, who served as director of the College of Education’s School of Health and Human Performance from 2001-03, joined the UGA faculty in 1989 as professor and department head.    He has published more than 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals, three books, four edited books, 20 book chapters and a white paper. His research is so widely respected by his colleagues in the leisure field and in the broader field of social sciences that his work is cited in 296 peer-reviewed articles, according to Web of Science (April 9, 2003). His major contributions to the field of leisure and health include his research on illness and coping, therapeutic recreation, and the leisure experience of individuals with spinal cord injuries.   Kleiber was also one of the first researchers to study identity as it relates to leisure and particularly issues of identity in athletes. He is one of the most respected researchers in the field of social psychology of leisure and sport including motivation, psychology of leisure experiences and gender. Kleiber has made more than 65 presentations on his leisure research – eight of which were at international conferences and 53 at the national level. He has made 23 presentations at the Leisure Research Symposium. He has also made presentations on his research to such non-leisure related groups as the American Anthropological Association, the American Educational Research Association, the American Gerontological Society, and the American Psychological Association. Before coming to UGA, Kleiber was an associate professor in the department of leisure studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL., from 1980-89. While at Illinois, Kleiber served as the department's director of graduate studies, assistant head and director of the Leisure Behavior Research Laboratory. He was an assistant professor in the department from 1977-80. He was an assistant professor in the psychology department at St. Cloud State University from 1974-77. Kleiber received his Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1972. He received an A.B. in psychology from Cornell University in 1969. Monday, October 13, 2003 WRITER: Michael Childs, 706/542-5889, mchilds@coe.uga.edu CONTACT: Douglas Kleiber, 706/542-4422, dkleiber@coe.uga.edu