Vida was promoted to Associate Professor-in-Residence effective August, 2025!

In recent years, Professor Vida Samuel has been on a whirlwind of career triumphs, community impact, and culinary adventures. In addition to her recent promotion, Vida is a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Applied Research in Human Development (CARHD) and the Department of Social and Critical Inquiry. Vida also received a certificate in campaign management from The Campaign School at Yale Law School.

Vida is a scholar in women’s studies and intercultural communication with a focus on the sexual lives of women at midlife. Beyond that, she is dedicated to breaking down barriers in education, championing post-secondary access and success for first-generation students and returning adults. She is the recipient of the 2025 UConn HDFS Excellence in Teaching award and the 2024 UConn Undergraduate Faculty Academic Advising award. She also helps keep the University ethical by serving on the IRB Committee.

When Vida is not teaching, she is making a measurable difference in the lives of women and girls. She is an ardent advocate, seamlessly blending education, advocacy, and community service to create a lasting impact. Her efforts have not gone unnoticed; she received LiveGirl’s 2024 Community Impact award. Vida also works closely with the Fairfield County Community Foundation as an expert in the unintended consequences of legislation on post-secondary education.

You know you’ve made it when you are talking about Barbie! In January, Vida was a featured speaker at the opening of New York City’s Museum of Arts and Design Presents Barbie®: A Cultural Icon. Her UConn Foundation sponsored talk, From Dreamhouse to Boardroom: Branding Empowerment and Leadership, addressed the iconic doll’s lasting social influence, the evolving understanding of female identity, and the growing demand for representation.

Vida was the proud keynote speaker at the St. Lucian American Association of Connecticut’s 46th Independence Gala in March proving that life is a beautiful full-circle moment. Connecticut was the first state she lived in after arriving from St. Lucia and she describes the moment as a profound homecoming.

Vida remains a force in mentorship. She is currently an advisor to the LiveGirl board (after serving as a board member) and continues to host her popular eight-week leadership programs on the UConn Stamford campus for high school girls. This fall, she debuted SHE THRIVES, a new pilot high school program designed to help girls thrive, both in school and in life. She is still the go-to mentor for students and young adults looking to navigate their professional journeys.

If you thought she could not fit anything else into her schedule, think again. Vida holds a certificate in culinary arts and generously volunteers with Food Rescue US, a national organization that tackles food waste by collecting fresh, edible food from establishments and delivering it to local service agencies and shelters. She was also the volunteer deputy director of communication for a local legislator in the last election.

When she finally puts the lesson plans and apron down, Vida spends her time doing the things that matter: traveling (spending most summers outside of the US), cooking, and catching up with her mother Gloria and nephew, Nicholas, on FaceTime. She lives her best and bustling life in Fairfield County.

A CT Insider investigation into homelessness in Connecticut quoted Preston Britner on the need to support child welfare-involved families. Read the article here https://www.ctinsider.com/projects/news/connecticut-housing-shortage-homelessness/

Sarah Rendón García recently first authored an opinion piece for Think Global Health on the ripple effects of Federal bans to migrant health care on U.S. Citizens in the areas of early childhood education, addiction recovery services, and mental health programs: Read the article here https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/how-federal-bans-to-migrant-health-care-could-affect-u-s-citizens

Kim Gans was featured in UConn Today about a program designed to reduce social isolation impacting homebound older adults: Read the article here https://today.uconn.edu/2025/11/training-program-delivers-resources-to-reduce-social-isolation-among-seniors/

Kari was promoted to Professor effective August, 2025!

Dr. Kari Adamsons came to UConn 18 years ago, in 2007, following a fairly winding journey. She spent her first two years of college as an international relations major with a specialization in Russian foreign policy (which continues to come in dismayingly handy in recent years). However, she soon realized that although international politics are fascinating, that was something she’d rather learn about as a hobby than pursue as a career. Instead, she switched tracks and obtained a BA in psychology. She then moved to North Carolina and spent six years working as a paralegal for an insurance defense law firm. She eventually dropped back to working part-time at the law firm and pursued her Master’s in HDFS at University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), with a plan to DFSwork with non-profit agencies. However, after an internship with a non-profit during her Master’s program, she realized that also was not the career for her (too much bureaucracy!). Research, however, seemed pretty interesting, so she left the law firm and went back to school full time to get her PhD in HDFS at UNCG. After graduating and completing a one-year post-doctoral fellowship with UNCG’s Center for Youth, Family, and Community Partnerships, she joined UConn as an Assistant Professor of HDFS. Now a Professor, her favorite part of the job is that there are so many different parts to her job. She loves the energy involved in teaching and mentoring, and then recharging by hiding in her office and analyzing data, intermingled with occasional community trainings and applied work to remind her why she studies the things she does.

Broadly speaking, Kari studies fathers, which has allowed her to dabble in a number of different content areas; by simply adding the phrase “with fathers” to any subject, any area is open for exploration! To date, she has examined subjects such as the development and expression of fathering identities during the transition to parenthood, fathers’ influence on child obesity, nonresident fathering and shared parenting following divorce (and recently, during COVID), and most recently, the processes involved in the transmission of risk behaviors such as substance use between fathers and adolescent children. Her passion for understanding and including fathers dates back to an independent study in college. At the time, Kari was interested in child abuse prevention, and a local children’s advocacy organization requested research on whether fathers influenced children’s outcomes and should, therefore, be included in their abuse prevention efforts (then exclusively focused on mothers). Spoiler alert: the answer was yes, they do, and yes, they should. Carrying that experience into graduate school, Kari noticed that in every class about parents and families, the research talked about “parents,” but the samples only included mothers, meaning little was known about fathers. Kari has spent her career trying to answer all of those unanswered questions. Kari also is fascinated by theories and methodologies, and especially the ways that our theoretical lens or methodology not only influences our interpretation of our results, but often shapes the results themselves.

When she’s not working, Kari enjoys relaxing at home in the woods of Columbia, CT, with her husband, Jim, and the family pets. Those pets currently include 2 English Setters and 3 aquariums, but have, at various times, also included numerous pet chickens and rats. She’s a fanatic about the Washington Capitals, Dallas Cowboys, Boston Red Sox, and UConn basketball (women’s and men’s), and she also enjoys watching golf and tennis. She enjoys watching them precisely because she is skilled at exactly zero of those sports herself. When not watching sports, she is probably catching a show at either Hartford Stage or the Bushnell Theater, particularly if a Broadway production is in town.

Terry was promoted to Associate Professor-in-Residence effective August, 2025!

Terry Berthelot joined the HDFS Department in 2016. Her research and advocacy efforts are primarily about access to healthcare for people who are sixty-five and older and for people living with disabilities. She received her master’s degree in social work (MSW) from Syracuse University after which she worked as a community developer within Syracuse’s Economic Development Zone. She then moved to Mississippi, where she directed a Joint Commission Accredited hospice program. Finding herself fascinated by the legal and ethical questions surrounding death and dying, Terry pursued her law degree at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). While at Ole Miss, she participated in post-conviction death penalty mitigation appeals. After graduating from law school, she joined the Center for Medicare Advocacy (CMA), a national not-for-profit law firm that, through education and advocacy, works to ensure that people who are sixty-five and older and people with disabilities have access to excellent healthcare and insurance coverage for that care. Terry is currently a member of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys’ (NAELA) Board of Directors and is on the editorial board for NAELA News. She and her spouse have a remarkable teen-age daughter and a reasonably well behaved three-year-old dog. They spend as much time as they can cruising their sailboat, Finisterre.

Candi Nwakasi was featured in UConn Today for his recent selection as a UConn Pepper Scholar. Read all about it in UConn Today https://today.uconn.edu/2025/08/meet-uconn-pepper-centers-2025-rec-pepper-scholars/ 

Preston Britner is a Professor of HDFS who has been on the faculty at UConn since 1997. “Brit” has been active in many service roles at department, college, university, state, and national professional organization levels throughout his time in Storrs.

Brit was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Northern Virginia. A first-generation college student, he completed his BA in psychology at the University of Miami, where he also captained the varsity track team, and his MA and PhD in developmental psychology at the University of Virginia, where he contributed to studies of child-parent attachment, child care, and child maltreatment prevention.

At UConn, Professor Britner has researched a number of topics (e.g., attachment-caregiving relationships; youth mentoring; prevention programs) with a focus on the application of child development and parent-child family relationship theory and research to applied settings (i.e., translational science), geared toward the promotion of healthy interactions and the prevention of negative behavioral outcomes. Much of his current research focuses on interventions for families with children in foster care. Brit is examining the effectiveness of college preparatory programs for high school youth in foster care, as well as looking at eventual college attainment for youth in care (and what factors influence those educational outcomes). Since 2001, he has been involved with the study and refinement of the Supportive Housing for Families (SHF) housing and child welfare intervention for families with children in, or at risk for, foster care. SHF is a national model of a community-based, family-focused intervention that was developed and studied collaboratively with state and nonprofit provider partners.

In addition to publishing two books and dozens of articles and chapters (most with student co-authors), Dr. Britner routinely testifies at state and federal hearings and briefings in Hartford and DC. He has served on numerous editorial advisory boards and was the Editor of the Journal of Prevention. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), Brit served as Co-Chair of the Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, leading APA’s policy efforts related to children and families. In Connecticut, he was Co-Chair of the Families with Service Needs Advisory Board at the legislature, working to improve supportive services for “status offender” children and their families.

At UConn, Professor Britner has chaired the Faculty Review Board, the Faculty Standards and Student Welfare committees of the University Senate, the Planning and Evaluation Committee for university accreditation, and the Teaching and Learning Advisory Board. Brit co-chaired the 2009 University Metanoia on “Preventing Violence against Women.” He was Co-Chair (2008-2012) of the Public Engagement Forum and the lead author of UConn’s successful 2010 Carnegie Foundation “Community Engagement” classification application. In the department, Professor Britner served as Associate Department Head (2006-2008) and Associate Department Head for Graduate Studies (2008-2010; 2019-2023).

Dr. Britner has been recognized as a University Teaching Fellow (2003) and with the AAUP Service Excellence Award (2011), the Philip E. Austin Endowed Chair (2013-2016; the first UConn HDFS faculty member to hold an endowed chair), the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Public Engagement (2015), and the 2019 Edward C. Marth Mentorship Award (outstanding mentoring of graduate students).

In 2023, he won the Distinguished Provost’s Outstanding Service Award for exemplary service and making an indelible impact to enhance the University’s mission. At the ceremony, the Provost shared the number and scope of Brit’s current service roles, prompting gasps from the audience and a re-thinking of when to say “no” from the award recipient.

Kim Gans and Beth Russell were featured in UConn Today for their participation in InCHIP’s Community Engagement Research Core’s networking event.