Colleen K. Vesely, Ph.D. completed her M.A. at UConn in HDFS in 2006. She then earned a doctorate in Family Science at the University of Maryland. At UConn, Colleen worked closely with Sara Harkness and Charlie Super on the Baby Study. She gained hands-on experience conducting research with families with young children and developed a depth of knowledge regarding the role of culture in families’ experiences and children’s development. A favorite memory from her time at UConn is traveling with the entire Baby Study lab led by Drs. Harkness and Super to The Netherlands to present findings.
Colleen draws upon what she learned at UConn regarding working with families across cultures in her current work with students and families. Colleen is an Associate Professor and the Graduate Academic Program Coordinator in the Inclusive Early Childhood Education program at George Mason University. Colleen’s work is grounded in a critical, ecosystemic, antiracist perspective, focused on the intersection of two contexts, family and early childhood systems and considers how macro-level systemic and structural forces shape these contexts. She uses Community-based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) and other emancipatory approaches to examine and center the experiences and roles of primary caretakers and teachers in young children’s lives. In addition, Colleen teaches courses on families and family partnership and qualitative methods.
Over the last 10 years, using CBPAR approaches, Colleen has worked with families and child- and family-serving institutions across northern Virginia to understand and center families who experience marginalization to co-create knowledge that informs attuned, aligned, and responsive programs, policies, and practices. Much of this work is conducted using Community Advisory Boards or Family Councils, a hallmark of CBPAR work, to shift power back to communities—especially communities where systems were not built. Most recently, Colleen and collaborators were awarded a Spencer Foundation Vision Grant focused on early childhood systems change for educational equity.
Colleen continues to remain connected to UConn HDFS . Specifically, in support of the Administration for Children and Families and the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation Child Care and Early Education Policy and Research Consortium, Colleen is facilitating a national research collaborative focused on reimagining family partnership in early education and child care. Vanessa Esquivel, a current HDFS doctoral student is co-facilitating this collaborative, and faculty member, Kevin Ferreira van Leer is a key member of this collaborative. Colleen and Kevin also led a webinar for the National Council on Family Relations focused on immigrant families and immigration policy. Colleen would love to connect and collaborate with other UConn faculty and students whose work focuses on participatory approaches with immigrant families who have young children. She is always looking to engage and learn with other scholars, family leaders, and community leaders regarding the big visions and the nitty gritty details/logistics of reimagining family partnership vis-a-vis family-centered systems change.
Colleen has three children, ages 14, 11, and 7, who keep her very busy with their swim, marching band, art and cross-country schedules. To relax and rejuvenate her spirit, Colleen likes to spend time outside with her husband, children, and their family’s black Lab named Puma.
Sumin Kim is a first-year PhD student working with Dr. Annamaria Csizmadia, specializing in Diversity and Culture. Originally from Seoul, Korea, Sumin lived in the Netherlands, Dubai, and Germany before moving to the United States. Her diverse international experiences have significantly shaped her research interests in multicultural identities and the psychological complexities faced by children navigating multiple cultures. Sumin earned her bachelor’s from Sungkyunkwan University in Korea, with a double major in Psychology and Child Psychology & Education, focusing on child development. She then pursued a master’s degree in Child Development and Family Studies at Yonsei University, where she integrated youth development with an understanding of societal influences on developmental trajectories. During her master’s program, Sumin led counseling sessions at a regional children’s center, focusing on racial-ethnic socialization to help multiracial youth adapt to Korean society. In her master’s thesis she explored the psychological challenges faced by Korean multicultural youth returning after living abroad, emphasizing the critical role of social support in navigating cultural identity issues. After completing her master’s, Sumin worked as a researcher at Seoul National University’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Lab, contributing to projects on minority children with neurodevelopmental disorders. She later worked as a psychotherapist, helping multicultural children develop social and academic skills to adjust to mainstream society, which gave her firsthand experience of how multiculturalism impacts psychological well-being.
Beth Russell has spent 20 years studying psychological distress and how people manage it. Her studies examine how individuals and families respond to stress across a range of typical life events (like the transition to parenthood) and atypical experiences (caregiving in the context of chronic health conditions). Her most recent work examines the multi-level influences that shape people’s responses to stress, spanning individual, social, and place-based factors over time. She is currently on several teams funded by both internal and external awards to develop and test interventions that target the regulation of distress to improve psychosocial outcomes.
Sarah Rendón-García collaborated and is featured in the short-form documentary “Invisible Wounds: Unveiling Migration Trauma.” Directed by Oscar Guerra, an Associate Professor of Film and Video Production at UConn, this documentary recently premiered on PBS. You can watch it here (
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!
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: 
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