8 HDFS grad students and 6 HDFS faculty will be giving 11 presentations at the Society for Research on Adolescence in San Diego in April. See them all here.
Author: Janice Berriault
Rebecca Puhl receives AAUP Exellence Award- Career
Congratulations to Professor Rebecca Puhl, winner of the 2023 AAUP Research Excellence Award –Career! This award recognizes all of Rebecca’s outstanding research achievements.
Laura Donorfio winner of AAUP Exellence Award-Teaching Career
Congratulations to Associate Professor Laura Donorfio, winner of the 2023 AAUP Excellence Awards-Teaching Career! Laura is an amazing instructor and this award recognizes the impact she has had on so many students in her career to date!
Sarah Casper receives CETL Outstanding Adjunct Award
Congratulations to Sarah Casper, winner of the 2023 University Outstanding Adjunct Award from the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning! Sarah has taught a large range of HDFS courses in both Hartford and Waterbury, and students rave about her courses.
8 UConn grad students awarded CHHD Graduate Certificate
The UConn Daily Campus had a story about the granting of 8 graduate certificates in Culture, Health, and Human Development. Read the article here.
Laura Mauldin profiled in STAT News

Associate Professor Laura Mauldin was recently profiled in STAT News in their “Living With” series, which “explores the contours of life with chronic illness, from the prelude to diagnosis to new patterns of living, to wrestling with big questions about illness and health”. Read the article here.
Marlene Schwartz featured in Connecticut Public Broadcasting show
Professor Marlene Schwartz was featured in a Connecticut Public Broadcasting show, Providing healthy and free school lunches for all. Listen to the podcast here.
Alaina Brenick’s project funded by UConn JEDI Research Initiative
Congratulations to AssociateProfessor Alaina Brenick, whose project, Validating a measure of school-based interpersonal and institutional discrimination experienced by transgender and gender non-binary youth was funded by the UConn Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Research Initiative.
Annelieses Lapides, HDFS Alumni Spotlight, March 2023
Anneliese graduated from UConn in 2020 with a B.A. in HDFS and a B.S. in Biological Sciences. As a pre-med student who hoped to become a pediatrician, she added an HDFS major in order to foster an understanding of physical, social, and emotional child development. By pursuing HDFS, she was able to emphasize the multidisciplinary human side of medicine. Anneliese is currently in her third year of medical school at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont (LCOM) and is completing her clinical rotations at the school’s Connecticut Campus in Norwalk and Danbury. She plans to apply for pediatrics residency in September, and will either focus on primary care, developmental/behavioral pediatrics, or pediatric oncology. She also is interested in medical education and mentoring.
Anneliese’s other passions include social justice and advocacy for racial equity, including working to dismantle systemic racism that has led to health inequities and understanding the social determinants of health. She developed this passion while taking Research Methods in HDFS. During her time in medical school, she served as her class representative on the Medical Education Antiracism Task Force. In December 2020, she co-founded a local non-profit in her hometown of East Lyme, CT: the Southeastern Connecticut Organization for Racial Equity (SCORE). She currently serves as the group’s Director of Community Engagement. The organization has worked to provide scholarships for graduating high school students of color, presented to the town Board of Selectmen to discuss racism as a public health crisis, and worked with the Board of Education on their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Anneliese is dedicated to using her platform as a future physician to ensure that everyone has equitable access to healthcare, and believes that pediatrics is a great place to enact social change to break harmful systemic cycles.
Suge Zhang, HDFS Graduate Student Spotlight, March 2023
Suge Zhang is a first-year PhD student working with Dr. Charles Super as an advisor. Her primary interest lies in how race, ethnicity, and culture interact to affect the experiences of Asian and Asian American parents and children. In particular, she is interested in ethnic-racial socialization among Asian immigrant families from an intergenerational perspective. Another line of her research focuses on Asian American fathering and the role of employment in Asian American fathers’ involvement in parenting.
Prior to starting her doctoral study at UConn, Suge worked as a Research Associate at the Yale Child Study Center, where she supported the preliminary development and validation of a new, multidimensional measure of Chinese parents’ emotion regulation beliefs and behaviors. She graduated from New York University (NYU) with a bachelors in social work and drama in 2018 and a masters of social work in 2019. During her time at NYU, Suge accumulated a diverse range of work experiences encompassing academic research, clinical practice, and social activism concerning understudied, under-recognized needs and challenges of Asian American families in New York City.
Suge was born and raised in China and moved to the US with her parents when she was 13. She attended New Haven public schools and spent her adolescent years in the East Rock neighborhood. During her free time, Suge enjoys exploring local eateries in New Haven with her friends and family.