Author: Janice Berriault

Hilal Kuscul, HDFS Faculty Spotlight, February 2024

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Hilal KusculDr. Hilal Kuscul is a scholar in the field of Human Development and Family Sciences, bringing over 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector to her work. She has been deeply involved in the development, implementation, and evaluation of parenting, literacy, and women empowerment programs within the nonprofit sector. This extensive experience served as a catalyst for her pursuit of a doctoral degree in Human Development and Family Sciences.

Hilal earned her Ph.D. in 2022 from the UConn HDFS Department. During the 2022-2023 academic year, she served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Human Development Department at SUNY Oswego. Since the Fall of 2023, Hilal has served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of HDFS at UConn Waterbury. In this position, she passionately integrates her practical knowledge and academic expertise into courses covering a broad spectrum, including Adolescent Development, Parenting and Parenthood, Close Relationships, Men and Masculinities, Family Policies, and Family Interaction Processes.

Rooted in her past work with under-resourced families, Hilal’s research delves into the dynamics of low-income family environments, examining their profound impact on both children and parents, with a specific emphasis on fathers. Her theoretical framework is grounded in bioecological and identity theories, contextualized by considerations of gender roles and cross-cultural perspectives. Throughout her doctoral studies at UConn, she collaborated with Dr. Kari Adamsons, acquiring expertise in analyzing secondary data from sources such as the Future of (Fragile) Families and Child Well-Being Study, along with data related to Turkish Fathers.

As a developer of several education-based interventions, Hilal is an advocate for evidence-based educational interventions. She is deeply committed to informing family-based prevention and intervention programs, aiming to promote resilience and mental well-being in both parents and children. Hilal’s work also aims to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and public understanding. She aims to translate academic insights into accessible language, ensuring that complex concepts become relatable to students and diverse learners across a range of programs.

Hilal has two sons, currently in the phase of ’emerging adulthood’ and enjoys spending time with them and her husband. She has a passion for watching true crime series and reading books on history and mythology. Whenever the opportunity arises, she also likes to visit museums and libraries.

Candi Nwakasi, HDFS Faculty Spotlight, January 2024

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Candi NwakasiDr. Candi Nwakasi is gerontologist who joined UConn HDFS as an assistant professor in August 2023. He is also an affiliate faculty of the Africana Studies Institute and a member of the UConn Cancer Survivorship Research Program. Candi’s work is based on using research, practice, and teaching to inform efforts geared towards addressing inequities in the aging and health experiences of minoritized people within and outside the US. His research program includes cancer survivorship and support access, cognitive health/decline and caregiving, and health care access in disadvantaged populations. He is also the co-founder of Black in Gerontology and Geriatrics (BIGG), a non-profit that is making efforts to amplify Black voices and elevate Black scholars and practitioners in the field of Aging. They recently received a 5-year NIA award to expand their work in the United States.

Across his career, Candi has combined work experience in public health care delivery, pharmaceutical, non-profit, and academia. He was initially trained as a Biochemist, before earning his Public Health master’s degree in the United Kingdom, and a Ph.D. in Social Gerontology from Miami University of Ohio. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southern Indiana, working on a dementia workforce improvement program targeting rural Indiana, before joining Providence College as a tenure-track Health Sciences Assistant Professor in 2020 (during the pandemic).

Currently, Candi is investigating sociocultural factors influencing cancer survivorship experience in Black and Latinx populations. He is also collaborating on projects to identify psychosocial and environmental determinants of cognitive decline in older Black adults, psychosocial support access in aging/older Black cancer survivors, mental health seeking in Black cancer survivors, and understanding motivations for caregiving. Candi is a strong believer in mentorship and appreciates the power of mentorship in minoritized student and scholars in academia.

Beyond work, Candi enjoys watching soccer, playing soccer, playing video games (especially soccer), and discussing soccer. He is a second-generation Arsenal FC of England fan. He also loves to hang out with friends and family.

Amanda Sather, HDFS Graduate Student Spotlight, January 2024

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Amanda SatherAmanda is currently a first-year PhD student working with Dr. Kari Adamsons. She is originally from Seattle but moved to Phoenix to attend Arizona State University (ASU) for her undergraduate degree. In May 2023 she earned a B.S. in Political Science and Psychology from ASU. During her undergraduate studies, she worked in several child development labs where she became interested in child and adolescent development. In addition, she worked in a lab examining family relationships, leading her to become fascinated by parent-child relationships and their contribution to children’s and adolescents’ developmental outcomes. For her honors thesis, she studied parent-child emotional synchrony and its association with early adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. Through her research labs and her honors thesis, she gained experience and knowledge about research examining parent-child relationships.

At UConn, Amanda has continued to further her understanding of parent-child relationships and child development. Specifically, she wants to conduct research examining the role of parent-child relationships in children’s and adolescents’ mental health and risk taking, with particular interest in substance use and abuse, delinquent behaviors, anxiety, and depression. In addition, she is interested in how parents’ behaviors contribute to these adolescent outcomes. In the future, she plans to continue studying predictors of adolescent substance use and other mental health outcomes. Ultimately, she aims to conduct research that can have real-world implications for families and adolescents.

Outside of school work, Amanda typically spends her time watching sports. She is a huge Seattle sports fan, so she will often spend her free time watching games on TV. In addition, she loves to read books for fun and spend time outdoors.

Michael Munoz (’01), HDFS Alumni Spotlight, January 2024

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Michael Munoz ('01)Michael knew at a young age he wanted to work to create greater access and opportunity to corporate America for individuals from underrepresented groups. Through his previous work with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of Connecticut and their various Diversity and Inclusion training programs, Michael saw the importance of creating spaces of belonging and inclusion for all. While at UConn, Michael was able to engage in classes that taught the sociological and anthropological components of Human Development in underrepresented communities that became the backbone of his career in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

While at UConn, Michael was active with UConn Hillel, the ADL, and the Puerto Rican and Latin American Cultural Center. In his senior year, Michael secured an internship in Diversity & Inclusion at the Phoenix Wealth Management Company in Hartford. Upon graduating from UConn in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in HDFS, Michael was able to leverage his degree and his internship at the Phoenix to land a job as a Diversity & Inclusion Coordinator at ESPN where he helped to build ESPN’s D&I programs from the ground up. Michael helped launch various employee resource groups, ran the Women’s Leadership Development Program and various hiring, mentoring, and retention initiatives for the company.

Michael has maintained a focus on building greater inclusion and equitable systems within large companies like MassMutual, EY, and Aetna. Today, Michael leads Global DEI efforts for the Marketing organization at Google. Michael’s focus is to ensure leaders are held accountable for real change; Google Marketing builds a team that looks like its users and fosters belonging for all; and builds a body of work that challenges the status quo. Michael also holds an Executive Masters in Human Resource Management from Cornell (‘17) and serves on the Board of Directors for UConn Hillel and the ADCOLOR organization.

Waterbury HDFS students organize community outreach project

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Laura Donorfio
Donorfio

Students in Laura Donorfio’s HDFS 4007W organized UConn Waterbury’s first “Career Closet” event on November 14th. Over 100 students attended the free event to pick out several articles of professional clothing for future interviews/careers. All clothing was donated by community partners.

Two HDFS alumni were involved and worked closely with the class: Heather Price (2016 graduate), Assistant Director of Academic Affairs at UConn Waterbury and Ali DeGirolamo (2020 graduate), Mayoral Aide for the city of Waterbury.

Tianmei Zhu, HDFS Graduate Student Spotlight, December 2023

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Tianmei ZhuTianmei is a first-year PhD student working with Dr. Kari Adamsons. Originally from China, she first became a student in the US as a double major in Economics and Psychology at Smith College. At Smith, she worked with Dr. Marsha Kline Pruett and Dr. Patricia DiBartolo and dived into two research areas: coparenting and perfectionism of women of color in academia. These seemingly distant research areas both spoke to her identity and interests, which proved academic pursuits could be a thrilling rollercoaster. Before entering the world of HDFS field or even deciding to pursue a PhD, Tianmei completed several internships to try to escape from academia by meandering through various industries, from big PR firms to financial security companies, wire and phone corporations, and children’s clinics. Eventually, she gave up and admitted family is a constant theme that intrigues her. Encouraged by her undergrad mentor, she took a leap of faith into this amazing field, and she hasn’t looked back since.

Tianmei’s current research is driven by two core passions. In one role, she is now working on parenthood-related research with Dr. Adamsons and hoping to discover more about how parents perceive, negotiate, and practice their coparenting strategies. In the other role, she is working with Dr. Charles Super on the cross-cultural comparison of parental ethnotheories. She loves both topics and enjoys pushing herself to move forward like a determined snail. The small team and big lab settings bring her equally fantastic research experiences.

When she’s not buried in her class or research work, she likes hanging out with friends, playing video games, and trying out all kinds of recipes with all kinds of music played by her lovely Bose bar. Her favorite games are Zelda BOTW and Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney. She has both a PS5 and a Nintendo Switch stationed at home, most of the time serving as a final save point of her everyday life.

Lenette Azzi-Lessing, HDFS Alumni Spotlight, December 2023

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Lenette Azzi-LessingAfter graduating in 1996 with a PhD in HDFS, Lenette Azzi-Lessing continued her leadership as Executive Director of Children’s Friend, a child-and-family-serving organization in Rhode Island. She and her team built a broad range of services to meet the needs of marginalized children and families, particularly those in poverty. During her time there they developed one of the nation’s first programs for child-welfare-involved families affected by parental substance use and Rhode Island’s first comprehensive family support center. Under Dr. Azzi-Lessing’s leadership, Children’s Friend also pioneered an organizational equity and inclusion initiative to support its antiracist, anti-oppressive approach to service delivery.

In 2007, Dr. Azzi-Lessing left agency work to accept a faculty position in the Master of Social Work (MSW) program at Wheelock College in Boston, where she became a tenured, full professor. She founded Wheelock’s Graduate Certificate Program in Early Childhood Mental Health and served as faculty leader of Wheelock’s partnership with the University of Fort Hare (UFH) in South Africa to promote the wellbeing of young children and their families. Her work with UFH included co-conducting a community assessment and co-developing a Graduate Certificate Program in Early Childhood Development and Family Support in the South African Context.

In 2018, Dr. Azzi-Lessing joined Boston University (BU) School of Social Work. She serves as department chair and coordinator of the school’s Specialization in Children, Youth, and Families. Building on her relationships with the South African early childhood development community, Dr. Azzi-Lessing initiated a partnership between BU and the Children’s Institute at the University of Cape Town, focused on preventing violence against young children in South Africa and other low-and-middle-income countries. This work engages experts from the Global South, including community members with lived experience, to identify effective violence-prevention strategies.

Dr. Azzi-Lessing is a Senior Fellow at the Child Welfare League of America and a founding member of its Research Equity Committee. She is the author of numerous publications, including the book, “Behind from the Start: How America’s War on the Poor is Harming Our Most Vulnerable Children.”

Dr. Azzi-Lessing notes that her learning at UConn School of Family Studies (now HDFS) was the ideal complement to her social work education, enabling her to leverage a deep understanding of child and family development in fighting the systemic inequities that threaten the life chances of millions of children in the U.S. and globally.

Rachel Tambling, HDFS Faculty Spotlight, December 2023

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Rachel TamblingDr. Rachel Tambling is a Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut, a licensed marital and family therapist, a Clinical Fellow of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and an AAMFT Approved Supervisor of clinical behavioral health services. She received her MA in Marriage and Family Therapy from Western Michigan University and PhD in Child and Family Development with a concentration in Marriage and Family Therapy from University of Georgia.

Dr. Tambling’s research is focused on modifiable factors related to behavioral health service engagement. She is interested in research that explores ways to address barriers to behavioral health equity, including expanding the availability of couple and family therapy, and understanding the complex components of effective engagement and change during therapy. Dr. Tambling is also interested in the measurement of psychotherapeutic constructs and the ways in which measurement impacts outcomes of behavioral health services.

More broadly, her work is based on a Systems Theory approach, which highlights the complex and interacting effects (e.g., individual, familial, social structural, policy, societal) that influence well-being and behavioral health outcomes. Her research includes an examination of the ways in which societal factors, including stigma, social determinants of health, and access to services impact mental health and substance use treatment services. Dr. Tambling is committed to research that explores the complex components of effective engagement and clinical change using ecologically valid and rigorously collected data that are analyzed using advanced and appropriate statistical techniques. Her work has been cited over 2,000 times; she co-authored a top cited paper in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, the flagship journal of the marriage and family therapy profession, and has seen her work published in the preeminent journals of systemic scholarship (e.g. Contemporary Family Therapy; Family Process; Family Relations) and international journals of behavioral health and substance use (e.g. Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly; Couple and Family Psychology; Family and Community Health; Health Education and Behavior; International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction; Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, Policy).

Dr. Tambling is the Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Family Therapy, a premiere journal in the field of marriage and family therapy, and an author of the textbook Helping Skills: Basic Techniques for the Active and Engaged Helper (Cognella, 2023).

At UConn, Dr. Tambling serves as the Chair of the Institutional Review Board at the University of Connecticut and is an Affiliate of the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy, a Research Affiliate of the Center for Applied Research in Human Development, and an Affiliate of the Sustainable Global Cities Initiative.

Dr. Tambling has been recently honored with several awards. She is a 2022 recipient of the Western Michigan University Outstanding Alumnae Award for contributions to the fields of counseling, psychotherapy, and marriage and family therapy. She is also the NCFR Family Therapy Section’s 2023 Kathleen Briggs Outstanding Mentor Awardee, an award in recognition of her work in mentoring and supporting the next generation of scholars.

In her life outside of work, Dr. Tambling is an avid runner and enjoys travel, marathons, and travel to marathons.