The New York Times recently interviewed Professor Rebecca Puhl on the new American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines on treatment for childhood obesity. Read the article here.

Associate Professor Ryan Watson was featured in an article on how state laws restricting the rights of LGBTQ+ youth are detrimental to their mental health. Read the article at 19thnews.org.

Dr. Rebecca Puhl is a Professor of HDFS and Deputy Director of the UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health. She joined the HDFS faculty in 2015.

Rebecca was born and raised in Ontario, Canada. She completed her BAH in psychology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and then moved to Connecticut in 1999 to attend Yale University where she completed her MA and PhD in clinical psychology. She completed her clinical psychology internship at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, and then returned to Yale as research faculty in the Department of Psychology and as core faculty of the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity (founded in 2005). In 2015, after 10 successful years at Yale, the Rudd Center joined UConn’s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP). UConn’s commitment to multi-disciplinary scientific collaboration and research on health and wellness provided new and ideal opportunities for the Rudd Center to further its mission and contribute to the national research reputation of the university.

Since 2001, Professor Puhl’s research has addressed weight-based stigma and discrimination. She has authored more than 175 published research articles (most with student/trainee co-authors) and 24 book chapters on topics including weight-based bullying in youth, the impact of weight stigma on emotional wellbeing and physical health, weight stigma in health care and the media, and policy strategies to reduce weight-based bullying and discrimination. As a national research expert on these topics, Dr. Puhl has testified in state legislative hearings on weight discrimination and routinely provides expertise on strategies to reduce weight stigma to national and international health organizations. She has also developed evidence-based trainings to reduce weight bias in health care that have been implemented in medical facilities across the U.S., and her work is frequently cited in the U.S. national media.

Dr. Puhl has received multiple national awards for her research, from organizations like the National Eating Disorders Coalition, the Obesity Action Coalition, and The Obesity Society who selected Dr. Puhl as the 2018 recipient of the national scientific achievement award for excellence in an established research career. In 2021 she received the national Obesity Canada Distinguished Lecturer Award, awarded annually to a researcher whose scholarship has made a significant impact in the obesity field. That same year, she was the recipient of UConn’s CLAS Faculty Excellence in Research Award in Public Scholarship, and was one of 6 UConn faculty named to the World’s Highly Cited Research list.

Rebecca lives in Cheshire, CT, with her husband and two teenage sons. When she’s not attending her boys’ basketball games, swim meets, orchestra and jazz concerts, her favorite ways to spend time are hiking, baking, photography, and collecting sea glass on the coast of Maine.

Lisa Kraimer-Rickaby, HDFS instructor at UConn Hartford, was a Distinguished Teaching Awardee at UConn Hartford for the 2021-2022 year. Congratulations Lisa!

Professor Rebecca Puhl was featured in a UConn Today article on talking to adolescents about body weight. Read the article here.

Executive Director and Instructor in-Residence, Child Development Labs

Marianne was a student in the HDFS Early Childhood concentration in the late 90’s. As an undergraduate at UConn she discovered the Child Development Labs and found her calling as a teacher of very young children. While an undergraduate student at the Child Labs, she worked with infants, toddlers, preschoolers and their families under the guidance and supervision of the professional teaching staff. Marianne had found her place at UConn and her home away from home.

Marianne worked for Early Head Start and the Manchester Early Learning Center in the beginning of her career before finding her way back to the UConn Child Labs in 2004 as a member of the Professional Teaching Staff in the Infant Program. While working, Marianne earned an M.S. in Early Childhood Education from Eastern Connecticut State University.

Marianne continued working as a Master Teacher in the Preschool program at the Child Labs. As a classroom teacher Marianne focused on community and relationship building. Marianne and her family moved to Mansfield to continue to develop stronger ties to the community where Marianne’s children attended the Child Labs. As a member of both the UConn Child Labs and Storrs/Mansfield communities, Marianne found her rhythm in community engagement, taking part in school and town groups with the goal of supporting children and families.

In summer 2022, Marianne became the Executive Director of the UConn Child Labs. In this role Marianne plans to continue building community within the Child Labs and the broader UConn and Storrs/Mansfield communities. Marianne continues building ties between the Child Labs and other departments within the university community as well as the town of Storrs/Mansfield. Marianne plans to focus on social justice, anti-bias and anti-racist work with the professional staff, college students, children and families at the Child Labs. Marianne is a member of a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee within the public school system working to support anti-racist, anti-biased, welcoming policies and practices within the local school district.

Marianne and her husband Allen, their two children Ben and Amelia, and their dog Truffle have made Storrs/Mansfield their home. The children have gone through the local school system, starting at CDL as young infants and rising into the local middle and high schools. The entire family is engaged with the community through youth sports, school leadership and social justice movements. Marianne’s hope for her children as well as all the children and college students at the Child Labs is that they know their worth and value to the community and work to build and live in a society that is just, and supportive of all its members.

Professor Kim Gans is Co-PI on a 6-month grant funded by the Partnership for A Healthy Mississippi, State of Mississippi Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) to pilot the feasibility and acceptability of adding a social isolation prevention intervention to Meals on Wheels deliveries in Mississippi.

Roni Lang, HDFS adjunct professor at the UConn Stamford campus, was recently selected as the National Association of Social Workers- Connecticut Chapter- as Social Worker of the Year for 2022. Roni shared the following Maya Angelou quote which she said guides her professional life: “success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it.” Sounds like Roni is really living her motto – Congratulations Roni!

Congratulations to Professor Sara Harkness, who received a CLAS Funding for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives Grant for her project, Educators’ perceptions of challenges and competence in working with students of color.

Dilara Yaya-Bryson is an early childhood education (ECE) scholar. In the Fall of 2022, she moved to Connecticut to join the UConn HDFS department as an Assistant Research Professor (i.e., College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Research and Teaching Scholar). She has been in academia for nearly fifteen years. Prior to coming to UConn, she worked as a graduate research assistant and lecturer in different universities in the United States and her home country, Turkey.

Dilara’s interest in educational research started in 2008, after receiving her undergraduate degree in elementary education and teaching. While dreaming of academia, she began her graduate school journey with a master’s program in educational administration at Hacettepe University, Turkey. During this period, she realized that educational administration scholars heavily focused on elementary education and onward. This realization lit a question in Dilara’s mind: “How about early childhood education?” Therefore, in 2012, she decided to pursue a doctorate in early childhood education (ECE) at the same university and infuse her administrative perspective into ECE research. Dilara’s research centers on how to improve the quality of ECE, emphasizing research, policy, and practice intersections.

“Quality” is an umbrella term for Dilara’s research, which covers a range of parameters and policy considerations, including ECE classroom environment, workforce qualifications and professional development, administrative quality, and equitable and inclusive settings. For her first doctoral dissertation, she aimed to highlight the policy gaps in quality assurance of ECE settings in Turkey and inquire about successful examples abroad. The Scientific and Technologic Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) awarded her with an international doctoral scholarship. She came to the United States in 2015 as a visiting scholar to collaborate with professors at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Greensboro. For a year, she collected data to look into a well-established Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) in North Carolina. During this process, she visited several ECE centers to observe classrooms and interview teachers, center directors, and state QRIS consultants. She also had the chance to join graduate classes and better understand the graduate school system in the US.

After a productive year and meeting wonderful mentors, she returned to UNC Greensboro as an international student in 2017 to pursue her second doctorate in HDFS. This time, she framed her dissertation study toward analyzing a US-based nationally representative dataset to explore Head Start classroom quality, workforce experiences, and policy connections. In 2021, she received her doctorate in HDFS with a minor in educational research methodology.

Throughout graduate school, Dilara also worked as a research assistant in various research project teams on ECE teacher preparation and professional development, quality measurement of ECE settings, dual-language learners in Head Start settings, and Montessori education. In addition to her research experiences, she has assisted, taught, and co-taught undergraduate courses on diversity, equity, and inclusion in ECE settings and human development. Dilara is thrilled about new research collaborations at UConn, focusing on effective infant and toddler services and policies. She also will be teaching human development to UConn undergraduate students.

Outside her professional life, Dilara loves traveling, daily meditative walks, whispering her orchids to bloom quickly, cooking (and eating!), watching comedy shows from the 1990s and 2000s with her husband, and virtual coffee dates with her parents overseas.