Author: Janice Berriault

Dr. Rona J. Karasik, HDFS Alumni Spotlight, March 2022

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BA ’96 Psychology, MS ’89 HDFS

Rona J. KarasikRona J. Karasik, Ph.D., FAGHE, FGSA is a Professor and Director of the Gerontology Program at St. Cloud State University. Rona, daughter of UConn alumni Gail Zieky Karasik (BS ’58 Pharmacy) and Sheldon Karasik (BS ’57 Pharmacy), graduated from UConn with a BA in Psychology (1986) and an MS in Family Studies with an emphasis in Gerontology (1989). Using the skills she learned from her Family Studies mentors (Dr. Nancy Sheehan, Dr. Tom Blank, Dr. Steve Wisensale, and Dr. Lucille Nahemow), Rona went on to earn her doctorate in Individual and Family Studies from the University of Delaware in 1993. That same year, Rona joined the faculty at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud MN (where hockey, not basketball, reigns). She has taught Gerontology and conducted research there ever since.

Over the years, Rona’s research focus turned from family caregiving and senior housing to experiential learning and gerontological pedagogy. She is the author of numerous publications and presentations on gerontology internships, service-learning, classroom- and community-based activities, and incorporating anti-racist pedagogy into the gerontological curriculum. Teaching has become a passion for Rona – a fact that may surprise her Family Studies classmates who knew her to have a fear of public speaking.

Rona holds fellow status in both the Academy for Gerontology in Higher Education (AGHE) and the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) and is the recipient of local and national teaching awards, including AGHE’s “Distinguished Faculty” award. Currently, Rona is working with colleagues, including UConn HDFS Professor Dr. Laura Donorfio, on a textbook for gerontology interns. Most recently, Rona was appointed editor-in-chief of Gerontology & Geriatrics Education, the official journal of the Academy for Gerontology in Higher Education. 

As for her greatest accomplishments, Rona points to the two daughters she and husband, UConn alum Laurin Hafner, Ph.D., have raised. Their eldest is currently a doctoral candidate at Cornell University and their youngest will be graduating this spring as a 3rd generation UConn Husky!

Lindsay Westberg, M.A., HDFS Grad Student Spotlight, March 2022

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Lindsay WestbergLindsay joined UConn’s HDFS department in 2015 after graduating with her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Gettysburg College. For much of her graduate career, she worked with Dr. Preston Britner on the evaluation team of the Connecticut site of a federal demonstration project called Partnerships to Demonstrate the Effectiveness of Supportive Housing for Families in the Child Welfare System. There she worked with the Connecticut nonprofit service provider, The Connection Inc. (TCI), to assess whether a more intensive supportive housing program provided value-added to families involved in the child welfare system. She also wrote reports on topics such as the benefits of a scattered-site housing approach and peer mentoring for child welfare-involved families. Lindsay’s ongoing dissertation work is an extension of what she learned throughout this experience. In this project, she uses 20+ years of DCF data on families who have been involved in TCI’s supportive housing program, to assess the long-term impacts of this program on child welfare outcomes.

Lindsay’s involvement with this evaluation and exposure to the nonprofit sector sparked an interest that she wanted to explore further. As a result, she pursued two graduate certificates at UConn – one in Program Evaluation and one in Nonprofit Management. Lindsay enjoyed both of these experiences and solidified her interest in pursuing a career in which she could combine her background in HDFS with program evaluation and the nonprofit sector.

In October of 2021, Lindsay found a position that would allow her to do just that. She is now the Evaluation Manager at The Home for Little Wanderers in Massachusetts. The Home is the oldest child welfare agency in the U.S. and provides services to children and young adults including foster care and adoption services, behavioral health services, group homes, special education schools, and residential programs for transition age youth. In her new position, Lindsay has been learning a great deal about The Home’s approach to practice including trauma-informed care, restorative practices, and achieving permanency for youth. Some of Lindsay’s responsibilities include managing a follow-up project where families are interviewed about youths’ well-being after discharge from The Home’s services, quarterly data reporting, helping programs remain compliant with funders’ reporting requirements, and developing new evaluation strategies to assess how effectively The Home is carrying out best-practices in their work.

In her spare time, Lindsay enjoys spoiling her puppy, Hodie; trying new foods and cuisines, and traveling every chance she gets.

Kim Gans, HDFS Faculty Spotlight, February 2022

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Professor

Kim GansKim Gans is a nutritionist and behavioral health researcher. She is primarily interested in intervention development and evaluation research in community-based settings to improve diet, physical activity and/or weight. The majority of her research has been with ethnic minority, low income and/or low literate populations. Much of her research includes multi-level approaches to improve diet and/or physical activity through changing home, work, school, childcare, and neighborhood nutrition and physical activity environments in conjunction with behavioral interventions. Her research has also focused on applications of innovative health technology, particularly computerized tailoring using print, video, web and/or texting. Another emphasis of her work is on translational research to study the dissemination of effective interventions to various community and clinical settings. Kim is also an expert in intervention mapping, a step-wise protocol for developing theory- and evidence-based health promotion programs and has collaborated on designing interventions for cytomegalovirus prevention, HPV vaccine promotion, violence prevention, and social isolation among others.

Kim has been interested in health for as long as she can remember.  She loved to watch medical shows on TV from a young age.  She began her college education as a first generation college student with an interest in medicine and majored in Biology as an undergraduate at Duke University. While there, she took an interdisciplinary course called Perspectives on Food and Hunger that excited her about nutrition and changed the trajectory of her career.  Instead of medical school, she decided to get an MPH degree in nutrition at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Public Health. Her first job after graduation was working for the WIC program at Health Center #6 in Philadelphia and then she joined the Pawtucket Heart Health Program, one of three NIH-funded community-based heart disease prevention projects in the US.  While working, she went back to school part-time at the University of Rhode Island to get her PhD in Nutrition. Upon graduation, she became an Assistant Professor (Research) in Community Health at Brown University, which later became the Brown School of Public Health. Kim was on the Brown faculty from 1992-2014 and also served as deputy director and later director of the Brown Institute for Community Health Promotion. In 2014, she joined the faculty in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at UConn.

Kim has served as a principal investigator, co-investigator, or faculty mentor on over 50 grants funded by NHLBI, NCI, NICHD, NINR, NIMHD, NIDDK, CDC, USDA, multiple foundations, and state agencies. She has published 120 peer reviewed articles and book chapters. She has also developed numerous educational materials, programs, and dietary assessment tools for the public and providers. Kim is an avid collaborator who enjoys creating multidisciplinary research teams, and a passionate mentor – serving as primary mentor for junior faculty on 4 K grants, 4 diversity supplements, and co-mentor on many more. She won the Institute for Collaboration in Health, Interventions and Policy (InCHIP) Faculty Mentoring award in 2020.

At the national level, Kim has been in leadership roles for the American Public Health Association, American Heart Association, International Society for Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, and Nutrition and Obesity Policy Research and Evaluation Network. She has been on the editorial board for two journals and served as a reviewer for 28 other journals. She also has reviewed multiple grant proposals for NIH, USDA, foundations and international federal agencies. Locally, she has been in leadership roles for the Multiple Sclerosis Society, RI Food Policy Council, and RI Hunger Elimination Task Force.  She also serves as Director of Community Engagement for Brown School of Public Health.

Outside of work, Kim enjoys spending time with her family and golden doodle Jasmine, reading books (she has been in the same book club since 1986), genealogy research, wine-tasting, crossword puzzles, connecting with her Mom Squad over good food and wine, and exercising, especially boxing and walks on the beach.

Benton Renley, B.A., HDFS Grad Student Spotlight, February 2022

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Benton RenleyBenton Renley joined the UConn Human Development and Family Sciences Department in Fall 2021 as a first-year doctoral student. Ben, though, is no stranger to UConn HDFS as he graduated with dual Bachelor of Arts degrees from UConn in Psychological Sciences and Human Development and Family Sciences with a minor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in 2020. As an undergraduate, he completed most of his courses at the UConn Stamford campus. He treasures UConn Stamford as well as his springtime walks through the cherry tree grove (the largest one in New England) across the street in Mill River Park.

As an Honors Scholar, Ben completed an Honors thesis in HDFS with Dr. Kari Adamsons. His research focused on dimensions of identity and self-identification of disability among emerging adults diagnosed with anxiety and depression disorders. During this time, he discovered an affinity for the research process as he liked having an avenue to pursue questions that lacked answers. Ben also began to work with Dr. Annamaria Csizmadia as her research assistant to examine the associations between family acceptance and psychological adjustment among biracial LGBTQ+ youth. Fortuitously, this research utilized data from the LGBTQ+ National Teen Survey conducted by Dr. Ryan Watson.

Ben now works with Dr. Watson and the other members of the SHINE (Sexuality, Health, and INtersectional Experiences) lab to study health disparities among sexual and gender diverse (SGD) individuals. Ben is particularly interested in understanding how mental health outcomes and health behaviors of SGD youth and young adults differ across combinations of overlapping identities. In the year ahead, he looks forward to working with the SHINE lab to launch another iteration of the national survey on LGBTQ+ teens. Participating in this process from the early stages will allow him to really learn what goes into executing research on this scale.

Ben is delighted and excited to continue his academic journey at UConn surrounded by the steadfast support and abundant knowledge of mentors, colleagues, and friends. When he’s not taking copious course notes, he may be found playing notes of the musical variety on his electric guitar.

Dr. Luke T. Russell, HDFS Alumni Spotlight, February 2022

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BA ’10 HDFS and Political Science

Luke RussellLuke T. Russell attended UConn from 2006-2010. He entered the University initially as a political science major, with an interest in international relationships and the process of brokering peace between nations. On the advice of a friend, he took a course during his sophomore year on family dynamics taught by then department head Dr. Ron Sabatelli. Fascinated by the theoretical insights of family systems theory and the practical bend of Human Development and Family Studies, Luke added HDFS as a second major, and subsequently completed an honors thesis in HDFS. As an honors student, Luke took a graduate seminar on Divorce, Remarriage, and Stepfamilies taught by Dr. Shannon Weaver, which drew him into the study of brokering peace within divorced and separated households. Under the mentorship of Dr. Weaver, he received research support from the Summer Undergraduate Research Fund Gary Karp Award to complete a grounded theory study with emerging adult stepchildren about how they built, formed, and experienced meaningful relationships with their stepparents. Largely because of this experience, he went on to complete both an MS and PhD in Human Development and Family Science at the University of Missouri.

Since 2018, Luke has been an assistant professor of Human Development and Family Science at Illinois State University, where he has received both a University Teaching Initiative Award and University Research Initiative Award for his accomplishments in the classroom and broader publication record as a pre-tenure faculty member. In his research he continues to investigate how individuals living in diverse family structures (e.g., post-divorce families, remarried/stepfamilies, cohabiting families, single-parent families, etc.) organize their relationships, engage in strategies that promote resilience, and maintain family-members’ health and well-being. He also studies how broader social institutions (e.g., health care systems, schools, and government agencies) can function as supportive resources for individuals living in structurally diverse families. He currently serves on five editorial boards: Journal of Family Theory & Review, Journal of Family Nursing, Family Relations: Interdisciplinary Journal of Applied Family Science, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, and Personal Relationships; is a founding member of the Divorce Education Assessment Collaborative based out of Kansas State University, and in 2021 gained full certification as a Certified Family Life Educator. At Illinois State University he teaches courses in communication and helping skills, family policy, families in later life, and enduring issues for couples and families. His work both in the classroom and outside of it has been (and continues to be) greatly shaped by his experiences as an undergraduate at the University of Connecticut.