Emeritus Professor, and Director of the Center for the Study of Interpersonal Acceptance & Rejection, Ronald P. Rohner received an announcement that Interpersonal Acceptance-Rejection Theory (IPARTheory) is now part of the psychology graduation curriculum at the Instituto Universitario da Maia (ISMAI), an institute of higher education in Portugal. The theory is one of the required subjects in the Educational Psychology curricular unit for training psychologists.

Kim Larrabee, HDFS Lecturer & Student Coordinator of Early Childhood Programs

 

I joined the HDFS faculty in 2007 and I’m writing this ‘spotlight’ as I prepare to end a 33-year career in education; I will be retiring at the end of this semester. My journey to UConn and to my current position within the department has been both circuitous and rewarding. I am ending my career quite a distance from where it started in some ways, and in some ways, right back to where it all began.

My undergraduate work was in Environmental Sciences with a minor in High-Risk Outdoor Education. Following graduation, I worked for Unity College in their Community Programs, in conjunction with Outward Bound and Maine Youth Services and Elderhostel. I worked with adolescents right up through retirees running 7-, 14- and 21-days trips in wilderness settings in Maine; rock-climbing, ice-climbing, backpacking, winter backpacking, canoeing, and white-water rafting- it was quite an experience. When I got tired of sleeping in a tent, I completed my graduate work and a dual MA degree/NYS teaching certificate in K-12 Special Education/Elementary Ed. In 1988 I began a 15-year teaching career in Eastern Long Island. I was hired in the East Hampton Public Schools as a K-1 self-contained special educator and then the K-4 Resource Room teacher. In 1990, due to new policies, states had to guarantee that schools would serve all children with handicaps from age three (prior, the districts responsibility was aged 5-21). I was appointed the PreK Teacher Rep for the district’s Committee on Special Education and I served in that role until I left. I also served as the New York State Union of Teachers (NYSUT) Rep for 8 years, having developed a strong commitment to the principles of organized labor and collective bargaining.  During my tenure in the East Hampton Public Schools, I owned a home in Sag Harbor and was involved in local environmental and educational equity issues. I loved my time teaching and the highlights were taking children outside of the classroom- birding, hiking, and discovering the wonders of living on an island…especially the beaches and all that comes with enjoying and educating young children about that fragile ecosystem. When I discovered that I could teach children with significant learning disabilities to read using Field Guides coupled with hands on learning, a whole new world opened up for all of us. It was a highlight of my career. An interesting full-circle moment was 15 years later when a student from East Hampton joined the UConn ECS program! I knew her mom well as the Community DARE officer who visited my classroom every year.

Another highlight of my career in East Hampton, and one that was ultimately my segue to UConn, was my involvement with the Responsive Classroom Approach (RC). RC helped me clarify a critical aspect of teaching children with special needs (& ultimately ALL children); if a teacher’s knowledge is not firmly rooted in child development, truly differentiated instruction is impossible. A few dedicated colleagues and I spear-headed the move to RC and the elementary school became an RC School. We were a model school that teachers and administrators from around the country visited regularly. The heart of the RC approach is the belief that in order to teach children, we must know them individually, culturally, and developmentally. This approach required strong teacher reflection and the cycle of intentionality which were a highly cultivated and foundational aspect of RC.

It was my experience in training/mentoring teachers and administrators in RC that made me an attractive candidate for the Early Childhood Teacher Prep program at UConn, a program that held teacher intentionality and reflection as cornerstones of their program and aligned with the basic premises of RC: knowing the children in your classroom developmentally, individually, and culturally.

When I arrived at UConn in 2007, I was hired to work in the Child Development Lab as the Coordinator of Children with Special Needs, and to teach one course: HDFS 3183, the early childhood practicum course.  Over these 14 years, my position changed dramatically! The two big changes that defined my time at UConn came in 2010 when I became the Coordinator of the Early Childhood Specialization (ECS) and in 2009 when my teaching responsibilities made a significant jump. Ron Sabatelli approached me to develop a course on disabilities throughout the lifespan. This was an important addition to the existing curriculum in the department as there were no courses directly addressing disability studies. Anne Farrell approached me, and offered to join me in developing the course, and a partnership was formed, offering the course on both the Storrs and Stamford campuses. It was exciting for me because the course attracted students from many disciplines and a variety of majors. The course was converted to HDFS 3250 and I taught the course for 7 years until my responsibilities shifted, again.

When Jane Goldman’s retirement was imminent, Ron and JoAnn Robinson approached me to redesign HDFS 3120, Programs for Young Children. We decided to offer it fully online to make it available on both the Stamford and Storrs campuses. This cross-campus, online approach helped address the growing ECS program on the Stamford campus. I completely redesigned the course, offered for the first time in 2016 and every semester since.

My commitment to the principles of collective bargaining and organized labor carried over from my time with NYSUT, and I served from 2013-2020 as the AAUP Representative. Along with Linda Halgunseth we represented the department during the last grueling and contentious contract negotiation. The AAUP Executive Director seemed to never tire of hearing me beat the drum for the Article 13 employees- those of us in the department who are full-time contractual faculty who work without the security of tenure.  Article 13 was the final hurdle to the contract negotiations and Dan Malloy literally waived it through at 11:30 PM the last day of the negotiations.

My responsibilities as the Coordinator of the ECS have been the most demanding and simultaneously, the most rewarding aspect of my time at UConn. I have essentially recruited every student who has come into the program for the past 11 years, and that mostly falls into the demanding pile. What falls into the rewarding pile is having built extraordinary relationships with students and watched our program evolve into one of the most highly recognized Early Childhood programs in New England. When I think of what I will miss most, it will be the excitement (and sometimes relief) when a student recognizes that they have really found themselves, and their place at UConn through being in the ECS. Many of our students report that the ECS was the very best part of their time at UConn- that it had the most significant impact on their lives. It certainly makes for a rewarding note on which to end my career.

What’s next in retirement…. I have many interests outside of UConn and in my ‘spare’ time I am a practicing Theravadin Buddhist. I have been a dedicated practitioner for about 25 years, have a daily meditation practice and pre-Covid attended at least one study/practice retreat a year in addition to one monastic retreat. For several years I attended a 17-day silent, teacher-led retreat that put the spring back in my meditation step and kept my commitment solid. My other big interests are birding (I participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count in February with Cornell Lab of Ornithology), hiking, and open ocean/distance swimming. We moved from No. Stonington CT to Charlestown RI in 2019, so after leaving the east end of Long Island, I have finally gotten back to the ocean. Those who know me well know that I am hydro-powered! My intention is to do a ‘retirement gap year’- no big commitments for one year! Although, when that year is up, I do intend to become more involved with my local Land Trust in Charlestown and the Rhode Island Environmental Educators Association which I’ve recently become connected to. My husband retired last February after 37 years as a Fisheries Biologist with the MA Department of Environmental Protection. We spend a few weeks in Maine every summer on an island, and our plan is to extend that time, and to begin doing one big bucket-list trip a year! Retiring with some gas left in our tanks was a goal for both of us- I am calling this Phase 4: the ‘teenage years of old age’!!

Professor Marlene Schwartz was featured in Manuals Msd. Read the article here.

Associate Professor

Dr. Laura Mauldin is a feminist sociologist interested in thinking about how disability operates as a social category and axis of inequality alongside and intersecting with race, class, and gender. She is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of medical sociology, science and technology studies, and disability studies. Most of her work is focused on understanding social meanings of disability and the effects of medical knowledge and medicalization on our lives, particularly how we think about various conditions (such as deafness) and what “good care” in the context of disability or chronic illness means.

Dr. Mauldin’s first book was an ethnographic study of parents obtaining a cochlear implant for their deaf child. After this, she published a variety of other qualitative studies looking at such things as the caregiving experiences of sibling of people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, disparities in outcomes of pediatric cochlear implantation, and life histories of Deaf and queer people, among others. The thread through all of these projects is a critical examination of disability and the social consequences experienced by disabled people because of a culture that devalues it.

Her current book project is a study of spousal caregiving and the lack of care infrastructure in the US. The study, funded by the Social Science Research Council, also includes a look at how COVID-19 is impacting spousal caregivers and their partners. She has interviewed nearly 50 people across 22 states. These conversations are also sparking ideas about how creative and generative people are in caregiving; repurposing household objects and rigging medical technologies to meet their own needs. Part of her online methodology is asking for photos of caregiving objects and she’s working on creating an archive to document these ingenuities.

Dr. Mauldin lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her partner and toddler. She likes birding, eating coconut buns in Chinatown, and has just begun a knitting class. She is also a former spousal caregiver and a nationally certified American Sign Language interpreter.

Professor Marlene Schwartz was featured in a PhillyVoice article entitled, New approaches are needed to help teens eat enough vegetables, CDC says. Read the article here.

Professor Rebecca Puhl was featured in an Elemental article entitled, How Fatphobia Is Leading to Poor Care in the Pandemic. Read the article here.

Assistant Professor in Residence Terry Berthelot, as director of the Aging Research Interest Group and in coordination with UConn’s Engineering for Human Rights Initiative, convened a group of advocates, stakeholders, and researchers to discuss the challenges and opportunities posed by Connecticut’s transportation system for people living with disabilities and for the aging population.

Congratulations to Associate Professor Linda Halgunseth, who has been named Director of Academic Affairs at UConn Hartford, and was recently featured in UConn Today.  Read the article here.

Professor Marlene Schwartz was featured in an article, Just 2% of U.S. Teens Eat Recommended Amount of Veggies, in US News and World Report. Read the article here.

Professor Rebecca Puhl was featured in a podcast, What is Weight Stigma, in Factually with Adam Conover. Listen to the podcast here.