Pampered Chef Donation Strengthens Family Resiliency Program
Published: Nov. 30, 2004
November 30, 2004
URBANA--The Pampered Chef® has made a significant donation to the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) to broaden the outreach of The Pampered Chef Family Resiliency Program. The Pampered Chef made the initial commitment to fund the program almost five years ago, and this new gift will continue the work of the program for the next five years.
"With this continued financial commitment, we hope to learn even more about the factors that build family strengths," said Laurie Kramer, director of the program. "The additional funding should help us gain a deeper understanding of family functioning and relationships and give us insight into the reasons that some families cope with crisis and handle ordinary stressors better than others."
Earlier support from The Pampered Chef funded graduate student fellowships in the Department of Human and Community Development, research grants for faculty, a lecture series on family resiliency that is open to the public, and an additional $1.5 million to fund an endowed chair position currently held by Professor Reed Larson. In 2002, Doris Christopher, a1967 U of I alum and founder of The Pampered Chef, along with her husband, Jay, donated $10 million for the construction of Doris Kelley Christopher Hall to house the resiliency program.
"Two particular faculty research projects will benefit from the increased funding in the next two years," said Kramer. "Professor Angela Wiley, who developed the Intentional Harmony curriculum for handling work-life stress, will work with the management staff at The Pampered Chef to understand what kind of challenges they're facing with work-life balance issues. She'll create a version of Intentional Harmony that should meet their needs and then evaluate its effectiveness."
Kramer said the collaboration will benefit both parties, with The Pampered Chef reaping the benefits of the research they've been funding, and Wiley using her evaluation of The Pampered Chef work to develop a model for working with employees in large companies.
"The second project the additional funding will cover is an expansion of Professor Aaron Ebata's P2P (Parent to Parent) web site and Parenting News. These web-based parenting aids initially are scheduled to be used and evaluated by Pampered Chef Kitchen Consultants based in Illinois," Kramer said.
Kramer said the new gift will also allow the Department of Human and Community Development to better support the dissertation research of graduate students and offer more cross-disciplinary lectures and events related to family resiliency on campus.
The Pampered Chef Family Resiliency Program is a partnership between The Pampered Chef, Ltd., and the Department of Human and Community Development in the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. Doris Kelley Christopher is the founder and chairman of The Pampered Chef, Ltd., a Berkshire Hathaway company.