Graduate student Vanessa Esquivel (mentee of Caitlin Lombardi), received the 2024 Early Care and Education Research Scholars: Head Start Dissertation Grant from the OPRE of ACF to support her dissertation research, Investigating Parent-provider Relationships In Early Head Start Among Latine Families: An Integrative Sequential Explanatory Mixed Methods Study. She is the first UConn student to be awarded this highly competitive federal grant, which will support her work of building a comprehensive understanding of parent-provider relationships among Latine families and informing future policy and program efforts of Early Head Start and the broader field of Early Care and Education. This is a two-year award totaling $50,000. Congratulations Vanessa!
Author: Janice Berriault
Vanessa Esquivel wins Prof Development Grant for Latino studies
Graduate student Vanessa Esquivel received the 2024 Professional Development Grant for Emerging Scholars Studying Poverty and Economic Mobility among Latino Populations from the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families. The 2024 Professional Development Grant ($2,750) aims to support the professional, academic, and scholarly development of doctoral students pursuing research that focuses on poverty and economic mobility among Latino communities.
Alumni Tanika E Simpson new Assoc Prof position at Fairfield Univ
Tanika Eaves Simpson (PhD 2018) recently returned from a six month research visit to Australia, funded by the Fulbright Global Scholars program to study perinatal health practices of indigenous and BIPOC individuals and families. She also recently received a promotion to associate professor of Social Work at Fairfield University. Learn more here: https://www.fairfield.edu/news/archive/2023/april/two-fairfield-faculty-earn-prestigious-fulbright-awards.html
ECS and Child Lab faculty greet students at UConn Family Weekend
Anne Bladen and Marianne Legassey represented Early Childhood Specializations and Child Labs at UConn’s Fall 2024 Family Weekend. Anne and Marianne greeted students and their families attending Family Weekend events and shared information about applying for Early Childhood Specializations as well as the various ways for students to be involved at Child Labs.
Marlene Schwartz cited on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
John Oliver recently cited a study that Professor Marlene Schwartz co-authored on the “Last Week Tonight” segment about school lunches. Watch the video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YypArYDcjA
Taylor Maag (BA’13), HDFS Alumni Spotlight, October 2024
Taylor Maag, a 2013 graduate with a BA in Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS), has built a successful career in education and workforce policy, driven by her passion for ensuring that every learner and worker, regardless of their background, has access to economic opportunity. Taylor credits her HDFS education for providing a strong foundation in child welfare, family dynamics, and social policy, which fueled her passion for direct service and advocacy work.
After graduating from UConn, Taylor began her career in San Diego, CA, as a Therapeutic Behavioral Coach at New Alternatives, a nonprofit organization. In this role, she provided in-home support to clients aged 2-21 who had experienced severe trauma and were from low-income backgrounds, including foster and homeless youth. In this role, Taylor developed treatment plans, maintained detailed case files, and coached caregivers using behavioral interventions to improve day-to-day functioning. Her work with young people and families in San Diego inspired her to address challenges on a national scale.
Motivated by a desire to influence policy at a broader level, Taylor moved to Washington, DC, where she earned a Master’s in Public Policy from Georgetown University. During her studies, she interned on Capitol Hill, gaining firsthand experience in government operations and collaborating with national policymakers.
Upon completing her degree, Taylor joined Jobs for the Future (JFF), a national nonprofit focused on education and workforce reform. For over six years, she played a pivotal role in developing and implementing JFF’s federal and state policy agenda, focusing on workforce innovation, access to postsecondary education, and poverty alleviation policies. Taylor also led JFF’s congressional and practitioner networks, ensuring that federal policymakers remained connected with grassroots leaders implementing effective strategies.
Taylor then advanced to the role of Director of Workforce Development Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). At PPI, she launched “The New Skills for a New Economy Project,” a bold initiative aimed at providing economic opportunities for workers without degrees. Her time at PPI also involved publishing policy briefs, op-eds, and blogs, and representing the organization at panels and conferences, both domestically and internationally.
Recently, Taylor has returned to JFF as the Director of Workforce Policy, where she leads the organization’s federal and state policy efforts to enact change that allows the organization to reach their north star – that by 2033, 75 million people facing systemic barriers to advancement will work in quality jobs.
On a personal note, Taylor got married this year in her hometown outside of Boston and continues to reside in Washington, DC, with her husband, Peter and their dog, Richard. Outside of work, she remains active, enjoys traveling, and is an avid fan of Boston sports!
Lily Gorman, HDFS Graduate Student Spotlight, October 2024
Lily Gorman is a first-year PhD student in the HDFS program. She specializes in Adulthood, Aging, and Gerontology and hopes to research familial caregiving and end-of-life decisions under advisor Dr. Laura Donorfio.
Although Lily grew up in Massachusetts, she was raised as a UConn fan since her parents and extended family are from Connecticut. She graduated from Salve Regina University in 2020 with a BA in Psychology and a minor in Neuroscience and Spanish. She had a range of undergraduate research interests including autism, death in the family, and the effects of a childhood belief in Santa Claus. Due to her personal experiences, she was inspired to shift her focus to elderly populations and spent over 3 years working at the Boston Center for Memory on 25+ Alzheimer’s Disease clinical research trials.
Her current research interests include the dynamics between multiple caregivers in a family, ways to improve discussions about death and end-of-life choices, and how different personal factors influence caregiving experiences, such as gender, age, culture, etc.
Lily spends her free time reading, playing chess, and going to the beach whenever she can. She is a washed-up collegiate tennis player who now prefers to stay active via exercise classes and long walks.
Kyla McRoy, HDFS Faculty Spotlight, October 2024
Kyla is HDFS Assistant Professor in Residence and Coordinator of the Early Childhood Specialization (ECS) at UConn Stamford. Her graduate background includes both research and teaching, with a particular focus on how young children develop the crucial socioemotional skill of self-regulation and how teachers and families can promote this ability. She recently joined UConn in pursuit of a translational position where she could bridge research and practice by making evidence-based information accessible to the early childhood educators of tomorrow. In her dual role as assistant professor and program coordinator, she teaches undergraduate HDFS courses, promotes the ECS to interested students, and works closely with the Community Child Development Center (CCDC) in Westport to bring her students into high-quality preschool classrooms and guide their work.
Kyla’s journey to UConn began with her neuroscience major at UMass Amherst, where she became interested in executive function in both animals and children. After college, she obtained a full-time position as a research project manager at Michigan State University’s Early Language and Literacy Investigations Lab, which led her to sharpen her focus toward self-regulation in preschoolers. She was invited to apply to graduate school in the MSU HDFS program, where she completed her Masters and PhD degrees while serving as a research assistant across four grants, a teaching assistant, and an instructor. For the final two years of her PhD, Kyla also worked as a full-time Associate Teacher in the NAEYC-accredited MSU Child Development Lab preschools, where she used best practice approaches, developed curriculum plans, and guided undergraduate students during their practicum hours. Kyla has conducted professional development workshops for in-service and pre-service teachers and has published both research and practitioner papers on early childhood development, most notably for NAEYC’s major practitioner journal Young Children.
Alongside her faculty work, Kyla is a Certified Professional Dog Trainer and Certified Control Unleashed Instructor specializing in working with families who have recently acquired puppies. Kyla has been training dogs professionally for over 15 years and uses force-free, science-based approaches such as clicker training in private sessions and group classes, as well as raising and training dogs for service organizations like Paws with a Cause and Leader Dogs for the Blind.
When she is not teaching students or training dogs, Kyla enjoys hiking on local trails with her Golden Retriever, Jahi. She also likes psychological thrillers (books or movies), the outdoors, parenting podcasts or audiobooks, coffee/tea with friends, and spending time with her family on summer boating adventures.
J Kalinowski receives NIH K01 Mentored Career Development Award
Congratulations to Jolaade Kalinowski, who recently received a 5-year K01 Mentored Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health for a project titled Proof of Concept Trial of a Mindful Walking Intervention for Black Women with Hypertension!
Kari Adamsons and Beth Russell receive NCFR award
Kari Adamsons and Beth Russell received the 2024 Best Research Paper on Men in Families award from the National Council on Family Relations, Men in Families Focus Group, for their paper “Longitudinal transmission of risk behaviors between mothers, fathers, and adolescents,” published in March 2023, in the Journal of Family Psychology. The award will be presented at the 2024 NCFR Men in Families Focus Group meeting in Seattle in November.