Month: April 2022

Kaleigh Ligus receives fellowship at Academy Health

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Kaleigh LigusGraduate student Kaleigh Ligus was recently selected as the inaugural summer public policy fellow at AcademyHealth. In this fellowship, she will work alongside the Director of Advocacy to advance the mission and objectives of AcademyHealth through advocacy, public policy, education, and policy communication.

Edna Brown, HDFS Faculty Spotlight, April 2022

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Associate Professor

Edna BrownDr. Edna Brown has a background in developmental psychology, sociology, and social work with an interdisciplinary approach to research. She earned a Joint Doctorate in Developmental Psychology and Social Work from the University of Michigan. During her graduate career, she engaged in research endeavors at the Institute for Social Research and was a member of the Life Course Development Program and the Program for Research on Black Americans.

Dr. Brown’s research focuses on the impact of stressful life transitions on health and wellbeing during middle and later adulthood. Coping with relationship breakups and coping with illness are two major life transitions that affect a large percentage of our adult population. Using life course theories, she examines how social contexts (i.e., gender, social class, family configurations, social relations) and cultural contexts (i.e., race, ethnicity, religion), affect coping, health, and wellbeing during normative and non-normative life transitions, particularly among Black Americans. These social and cultural contexts provide meaning and substance for interpreting research findings. Dr. Brown also considers the factors that influence Black Americans’ health promoting behaviors and the development of health promoting interventions to reduce health disparities. An interdisciplinary theoretical framework permits her to provide practical implications that address societal concerns. She has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and presented at many national and international scholarly conferences on health and aging. Several of her publications and conference presentation were co-authored by graduate students. Dr. Brown is a fierce advocate for graduate students and has enjoyed including them in her research endeavors.

Dr. Brown’s interest in aging and health was further inspired when she and her son lived in Accra, Ghana in West Africa. She worked for the United Nations HelpAge Ghana project providing health, housing, and employment services for older adults across Ghana. While there she had the opportunity to visit several West African regions and quickly recognized many of the cultural traditions practiced among Black Americans. The similarities provided her an insight into the historical contexts and reasons for many of the traditions and how they were modified to promote healthy development among Black Americans.

Dr. Brown’s teaching incorporates her knowledge and passion about culture and diversity and about healthy aging. She has taught Diversity in HDFS every semester since 2007 and frequently teaches Adulthood and Aging. These classes help students to open their minds to the diversity among them, dispel negative stereotypes about people unlike themselves, and recognize that development continues past adolescence.

Dr. Brown has served her professional community in several ways. She served on the University’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion Advisory Committee, the Vice Provost COVID-Focused Work Balance Task Force, and the General Education Oversight Committee (GEOC) Content Area 4 Diversity and Multiculturalism. She is a faculty affiliate and serves on the advisory Boards of Africana Institute. Dr. Brown has served as a peer reviewer for several academic journals and conferences, and has been invited to serve on the editorial board for the Journal of Marriage and Family. One of her most challenging but rewarding roles was as Associate Department Head for Graduate Studies. The position gave her an opportunity to sensitively serve and mentor graduate students as they were making critical decisions about their professional development.

Dr. Brown has served her home community in various positions. From 2014-2017 she was appointed to the African American Affairs Commission by Connecticut House Majority Leader Joseph Aresimowicz. The committee served as advisors to CT policy makers about the unmet needs of African American constituents. She also served on the Board of Directors for Rockville Public Library, Vernon-Rockville CT from 2014-2018.

When not working, Edna enjoys strength training, walking, spinning, and dancing. She loved travelling to Caribbean, Central and South American countries to learn about different cultures, traditions, foods, and indigenous religions.

As of June 2022 Edna, will retire from UConn to enjoy traveling again. Another retirement goal is to work with elementary school children in underfunded public schools in vulnerable neighborhoods in her hometown, New York City. She hopes to expose these students to higher education opportunities beginning at a young age.

Elizabeth (Beth) Wilke, HDFS Alumni Spotlight, April 2022

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BA ’15 HDFS

Beth WilkeElizabeth (Beth) Wilke graduated from UConn in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in Human Development and Family Studies, concentrating in Early Childhood Development and Education. She received the State of Connecticut Office of Early Childhood’s Early Childhood Teacher Credential (ECTC) after completing Fieldwork & Supervised Teaching Practicums in UConn Child Labs’ Preschool 2 and Infant Blue Room.

Upon graduation from UConn, Beth attended Bay Path University in Massachusetts for two years and received a master’s degree in occupational therapy. She briefly strayed from her early childhood roots during her fieldwork experiences as an occupational therapy student, completing one fieldwork experience with the geriatric population and another with school-age children. Although she was not working with young children during this time, her undergraduate training as an early childhood educator was critical to her success as an occupational therapy student. During this time, she discovered that the concepts of developmentally appropriate practice and reflective practice were invaluable even outside the field of early childhood.

Beth returned to the early childhood field shortly after receiving her master’s degree; she accepted her first position as an occupational therapist at an autism-specialty program for the Connecticut Birth to Three System. Although the demands of a therapist’s first job typically elicit much anxiety, Beth found that she adjusted to the field of early intervention relatively seamlessly. She credits much of her initial success in the field to her training and experiences at the UConn Child Labs. The experience of creating developmentally appropriate curricula for children of varying ages, as well as building and maintaining rapport with children and families, created solid foundations for her future work in early intervention.

After almost two years at an autism-specialty Birth to Three program, Beth accepted a new position at a general program that serves children and families of children with a variety of needs. She frequently works with infants and toddlers who were born prematurely, are experiencing delays in their feeding and/or motor development, as well as those on the autism spectrum. Her professional interests include early signs of autism, particularly the potential association between early motor delays and later diagnoses of autism. To further her development in the early childhood/early intervention field, she is currently training to administer autism assessments such as the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), and TELE-ASD-PEDS, a tool to support the identification of autism via remote assessment. She is also enrolled in an interdisciplinary training course for early interventionists at UConn’s Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities Education, Research and Service to enhance her skills building capacity in parents and caregivers of young children.

Beth recently purchased her own condo in Farmington, Connecticut, where she lives with her cat and dog.  Outside of work and school, she spends time with friends and family members that live locally.  Her hobbies include cycling, swimming, and yoga.  She recently started trying to grow houseplants and is a big fan of Taylor Swift!