G. Hilal Kuscul is a family and human development scholar whose research centers around the dynamics of low-income family environments and their influences on children and parents, particularly fathers. She studies the contextual factors that influence fathering and the effects of fathering behaviors on children. During her doctoral study at UConn, she worked with Dr. Adamsons, gaining experience in working with secondary data through projects using the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study and the Turkish Fathers Project. Her work is theoretically driven, primarily using bioecological and identity theory and framed by gender roles and cross-cultural perspectives. She strongly supports research-based policies and practice and uses her research to inform family-based prevention and intervention programs that promote resilience and wellbeing in parents and children.

In addition to research, Hilal embraces teaching as a central privilege of her career. In her previous professional life, she had a rich experience teaching and mentoring adult learners in the nonprofit sector. She also received a college teaching certificate while at UConn to have a deeper grasp of teaching college students. In addition to teaching HDFS classes, she also worked as both program coordinator and facilitator for the Parenting Apart: Strategies for Successful Co-Parenting program, a state-certified program for divorcing parents coordinated by UConn’s Center for Applied Research in Human Development.

Hilal expects to finish her doctoral degree in the Summer of 2022 and will be a visiting assistant professor of Human Development at the State University of New York in Oswego in the 2022-2023 academic year. This experience will provide her with new opportunities in teaching.

Hilal likes to spend time with her husband, her college-aged sons, and friends. She loves to read books on ancient history and visit museums.

Mackenzie Wink is a PhD candidate who joined the HDFS department in 2017 to work with Dr. Maria LaRusso. She earned her BS in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay in 2016 and MA in HDFS from UConn in 2019. Mackenzie’s research interests largely focus on supporting the well-being of students and teachers in schools, primarily through Social Emotional Learning programs focused on building skills in awareness of the emotional experiences of oneself and others, relationship building, and self-regulation.

Mackenzie recently successfully defended her dissertation, which examined teachers’ social-emotional experiences in the classroom, such as their levels of compassion toward themselves, empathy toward their students, and experiences with job stress, to understand how these characteristics might impact their approaches toward behavior management. Findings illustrated that teachers’ well-being and empathy toward their students play an important role in their decisions for behavior management and interactions with the students in their classroom. Mackenzie hopes to continue this work within Social Emotional Learning interventions to shift from only teaching these skills to students, into a more a systematic approach for building social-emotional skills for everyone at school, including teachers and staff. Mackenzie also completed the graduate certificate in program evaluation and hopes to utilize those skills in this future work.

In addition to research, Mackenzie has had the privilege to independently teach or work as a teaching assistant for a number of undergraduate courses, including Research Methods, Infancy through Adolescence, Professional Communication, and Social and Community Influence on Children in the United States. Mackenzie also received recognition for excellence in teaching by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in 2021.

Mackenzie accepted a Postdoctoral Fellowship position with the Child Health and Development Institute to start over the summer. She is looking forward to continue toward supporting children’s mental health and social-emotional well-being through school-based programming in Connecticut!

Congratulations to graduate student Sydney Klein, winner of the Student Athlete Success Program (SASP) 2022 Recognition of Excellence Award for going above and beyond in her role as SASP Mentor.  She was nominated for the award by student athletes and SASP staff.

HDFS graduate student Abbey Horton received an APA Division 43 Student Travel Award due to her highly rated abstract to help offset the costs of attending the APA conference this August.

Congratulations to graduate student Rui Wu, who was awarded a UConn 2022 Wood/Raith Gender Identity Living Trust summer fellowship!

Congratulations to undergraduate student Sophie Lindsay who earned two HDFS awards!  Sophie worked for two years with the DASH project, the first year fully on WebEx before she met anyone in person.  Sophie participated in a range of projects, held her own with a group of graduate students, trained and supported other students, and collaborated on multiple conference presentations, so has earned the Outstanding Involvement in HDFS Research award.

In addition to all of her research accomplishments, Sophie also supported the department as a member of the curriculum committee, and by volunteering her time at multiple departmental recruiting events, so has also earned the Outstanding Senior in HDFS award.

Graduate Student Eleanor Fisk was the April Spotlight for SRCD. Eleanor is currently an SRCD State Policy Fellow in the CT Office of Early Childhood (OEC). Learn more about Eleanor’s experiences here: https://www.srcd.org/news/april-2022-spotlight-srcd-us-state-policy-fellow-eleanor-fisk

Qianxia Jiang has an interdisciplinary background in obesity prevention and intervention, psychology, health equity, and agricultural economics. She plans to graduate with her Ph.D. in May 2022. She is interested in the factors that contribute to obesity-related disparity and inequities, including the influences of built environments on health risks in marginalized groups, and applying this knowledge to inform interventions to promote healthy living. Qianxia first discovered her passion for obesity research as an undergraduate when she conducted research assessing how a food selection inhibitory control training game of children’s response inhibition affected eating behavior.

Qianxia has worked with professors from different departments on multiple projects at UConn. She conducts both quantitative and qualitative research with her advisor, Dr. Kim Gans, on an NIH-funded evaluation study of a multicomponent intervention that supports and empowers family childcare providers to improve the food and physical activity environments in their homes. She first learned about health equity and policy research by working with Allied Health professor Dr. Kristen Cooksey Stowers on multiple studies related to built food environments, disparities in food insecurity status, health quality, diet quality, and weight status. Beginning last summer, Qianxia was involved in an interdisciplinary grant that examines the association between the changing market structure and health outcomes. She also examined how changes in food retail market concentration relate to racial and ethnic inequities in food access over time. Qianxia has published several peer-reviewed publications and presented her research at both international and national conferences.

Following graduation, Qianxia will become a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Children’s Healthy Lifestyles and Nutrition, Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. This fellowship opportunity will provide training in novel ways to measure physical activity, behavioral epidemiology, and implementation science.

In her spare time, Qianxia loves hiking, snorkeling, kayaking, and traveling. She plans to get advanced open water certificate in Hawaii this year. She has two cats (Tiger and Coyote).

Sabrina Uva (HDFS ’22) was featured in UConn Today for her advocacy work: Read the article here.