Author: Janice Berriault

Shannon Weaver, HDFS Faculty Spotlight, June 2023

Posted on by

Shannon E. WeaverDr. Shannon Weaver came to UConn in 2002, excited to join a faculty whose members included experts in family policy and dynamics and whose work she had reviewed while studying for her degrees in HDFS. Shannon became interested in HDFS like  many of the majors here, when she took a lifespan development course that was required for her major at the time (nursing). After taking this class, Shannon declared an HDFS major and went on to complete both a BS and MS in HDFS with a concentration in Gender Studies and a PhD in Human Environmental Sciences, Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Missouri.

As her first experience with HDFS was with a lifespan course, Shannon greatly enjoys teaching HDFS 1070 Individual and Family Development in both large lecture and smaller online formats. She is also the Faculty Coordinator for the Early College Experience offering of HDFS 1070 in high schools across Connecticut. Frustrated by the lack of family material in most traditional human development texts, in 2018 she published a textbook to create a more inclusive and engaging reading experience for students. Years ago she created and proposed the popular HDFS 1060 Close Relationships Across the Lifespan course, which she continues to teach. Shannon values opportunities to engage students in learning material that will benefit them in their future professional and personal lives. Because she promotes student understanding by relating concepts to their own experiences and popular media, she was excited to be able to combine her two favorite interests, HDFS and Star Wars, to create a First Year Honors course: To Belong We Need: Exploring the Importance of Relational Connections Through Star Wars.

A committed feminist family scholar, Shannon emphasizes what she and co-author Elizabeth Sharp term feminist accountability. This concept was first discussed in their featured article in the Journal of Family Theory and Review in 2015 and discussion on the JFTR blog. She served as Chair/Past Chair of the Feminism and Family Studies Section for the National Council on Family Relations and a Co-Chair for the 2015 NCFR preconference, “Eradicating Sexual Violence on College Campuses: Putting Patriarchy in its Place.” This led to her co-editing a special 2017 volume of Family Relations, “Feminist Framings of Sexual Assault on College Campuses: Conceptual, Empirical, and Practical Innovations.”

Shannon’s current project, co-directed with Carol Johnston at East Carolina University, is the nationwide, longitudinal study entitled Children, Parents, Relationships and COVID-19 (CPR-C) with 1,000 initial participants. Early on, Shannon noticed that news stories and social media discussions by primarily mothers related the increased stress parents were experiencing while attempting to balance multiple family needs in the face of new problems and great uncertainty. Finding no existing measures of parental stress applicable to the unique stressors parents were encountering due to COVID, Shannon developed the Parenting During Covid-19 Stressors Scale (PDCS). Now about to collect the fourth wave of data, Shannon is creating a questionnaire to assess issues encountered as some return to “normal” while others may still be dealing with lingering health issues (e.g., Long Covid).

A second current research focus involves family rituals and the often hidden labor performed by women for these important family experiences. While many family scholars and therapists acknowledge that rituals are important for family functioning, the actual work and allocation of human and economic resources that makes such events possible has rarely been explored. Shannon hopes to address this lacuna in the family science literature through survey and interview data with women planning for family rituals in general, and family gatherings, in particular, for holidays.

Outside of work, you will find Shannon with her husband and their three children at their Wellesley home chasing around three rescue cats and trying not to be talked into adopting a fourth. When able, she spends time on numerous home improvement projects for their almost 90 year old house that seems to be constantly in need of repairs and baking crazy cakes for family birthdays and events. After spending her childhood years in Kansas City MO and summers in San Antonio TX, she is now always on the lookout for good BBQ (KC burnt ends anyone??). However, she will always make clear that while she will try any BBQ she can find in the Northeast, Kansas City style is vastly superior to that of Memphis, Carolina, or Texas.

Beth Russell, MPI on Research Excellence Program grant

Posted on by

Beth RussellAssociate Professor Beth Russell is a MPI on a Research Excellence Program (REP) grant through the OVPR, “A Mind-Body Intervention to Reduce Distress and Promote Wellbeing in LGBQT+ College Students”. This 2 year project tests asynchronous online stress management programming for this historically marginalized population of young adults.

Lois Sadler, HDFS Alumni Spotlight, June 2023

Posted on by

Lois S. SadlerLois S. Sadler, PhD, RN, FAAN is a Professor at the Yale University School of Nursing and Yale Child Study Center. Dr. Sadler received her BSN from the University of Massachusetts and her MSN from Yale University School of Nursing. She received her PhD from the UConn School of Family Studies in 1997.

Dr. Sadler came to UConn with a background in clinical practice and teaching. She was looking to enhance her knowledge of research methods and theories that would help her to more effectively serve the young families she cared for as a nurse. In the PhD program she learned to view the world in new ways to understand the critical intersection of nursing, health, human development, family theory, and social/structural determinants of health. Dr. Sadler relied heavily on the lessons learned in her doctoral education as she continued her professional career after completing her degree. She especially appreciated the mentoring from her dissertation committee chair and members: Drs. Anderson, Sabatelli, and Thomas, and she has endeavored to pass along this wisdom to her own students and mentees.

Since completing her PhD, Professor Sadler has taught at the master’s, doctoral, and post-doctoral levels, including course content in the areas of family studies, child and family development, pediatric health promotion, adolescent health, qualitative research, research ethics, intervention development, philosophy of science, and knowledge development in nursing science. She has practiced clinically as a pediatric nurse practitioner and has conducted research with adolescent parents and young families in diverse communities, school settings, home visiting, and primary health care settings. At Yale University School of Nursing, she has held a variety of academic leadership positions in addition to her research and teaching roles. Dr. Sadler’s NIH-funded research encompasses the transition to parenthood among adolescent parents and their families, adolescent pregnancy prevention, health equity, pediatric sleep, and evaluation of specialized support programs for young parents and children. In 2001 Dr. Sadler co-founded the home visiting program, Minding the BabyTM.  Along with colleagues and community partners, she tested, adapted, and implemented the program in the US, Scotland, England, Brazil, and Denmark.

Eleanor Fisk, HDFS Grad Student Spotlight, June 2023

Posted on by

Eleanor FiskEleanor Fisk completed her Ph.D. in HDFS in Spring 2023. She enrolled in the HDFS program in 2018 to work with Dr. Caitlin Lombardi on research about young children’s cognitive and social emotional development, family resources, and early care and education. During graduate school, Eleanor worked on numerous research projects, including longitudinal studies utilizing secondary data with Dr. Lombardi, a qualitative study on families’ and home visitors’ experiences with virtual home visiting supervised by Dr. Rachel Chazan Cohen, and an evaluation of family engagement and outcomes for a local Head Start agency led by Dr. Beth Russell. These experiences and mentorship helped Eleanor to shape her research interests around understanding the role of contexts in which early childhood development occurs and how programs and policies can support children and families experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage.

Eleanor successfully defended her dissertation in March. In her dissertation, she used multiple methods to understand Early Head Start programs’ service provision to families who enroll prenatally. Findings included a description of the types of services Early Head Start programs typically provide to prenatal families and showed how the availability of those services may be linked with later maternal well-being and child social emotional development. This project allowed Eleanor to expand her methodological experiences to include qualitative data collection from interviews with Early Head Start staff, which provided additional perspective on successes and challenges around providing services prenatally.

In addition to research at UConn, Eleanor completed a Society for Research in Child Development State Policy Pre-Doctoral Fellowship with the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood in 2021-2022. This fellowship gave Eleanor firsthand experience with data-driven policymaking and the role that researchers can play in policymaking, and helped to shape many of her goals around communicating and disseminating research in a way that is accessible and understandable to practitioners and policymakers.

Eleanor recently started a position as a Research Associate at James Bell Associates within their Child and Family Development practice area. She is looking forward to continuing working on applied research and evaluations of programs that support children and families. Outside of work, Eleanor can be found hiking (preferably with a view of the ocean), tending to her ever-growing collection of houseplants, and cooking with local ingredients or trying new restaurants!

Eminet Gurganus, HDFS Grad Student Spotlight, June 2023

Posted on by

Eminet GurganusEminet Abebe Gurganus, PhD is a 2023 graduate of the HDFS doctoral program. She entered the program having earned her Bachelor’s and Master of Public Health degrees from Yale University. Her research interests pertain broadly to social determinants of health, with a specific interest in system-level interventions to address health inequities. Working with her advisor, Dr. Marlene Schwartz, she has investigated partnerships between the healthcare system and social services (e.g., food pantries) and how such partnerships can be improved and leveraged to better serve people in need. In her dissertation, she applied qualitative and quantitative methods to study the implementation of referral and linkage processes between healthcare and community-based organizations for patients experiencing needs such as food or housing insecurity.

In addition to her research, Eminet has worked for several years in the healthcare sector. Her roles have included serving as program manager for a children’s hospital’s community health initiatives, health policy associate at a statewide child health policy institute, and director of grantmaking for a foundation focused on health equity. She currently works in the insurance industry as a strategic advisor for health equity.

Outside of work, Eminet enjoys nature walks, birdwatching, cooking, and being mom to her two boys, which she considers a privilege and her most important job.