Darlis joined the UConn HDFS Ph.D. program in Fall 2021. She is the recipient of the CLAS Dean Graduate Fellowship and works as a graduate assistant for the Center for the Study of Culture, Health, and Human Development.  She previously earned her bachelor’s in Psychology from SUNY at Purchase College in New York.

During her time at Purchase, she took a required two-semester research methods and statistics course and a two-semester senior thesis project. Her thesis was a critical review of unpublished and peer-reviewed published articles from 2010-2020 that assessed the “bilingual advantage.” The bilingual advantage is the enhanced mental flexibility or ability to shift thoughts or actions according to the environment among people who speak more than one language. These research experiences helped Darlis realize what she wanted to include in her future career.

While an undergraduate student, she investigated the research literature on cross-cultural studies of human development and discovered the work of two UConn HDFS professors, Dr. Sara Harkness and Dr. Charles Super.  Notably, their cross-cultural research and work on parents’ cultural belief systems are what she found most exciting.  After discovering their work, Darlis learned about UConn’s HDFS program.

During Darlis’ time at UConn, she plans on studying mixed-race individuals, multicultural identity development, and possible intervention/prevention programs for immigrant/multicultural families.

In Darlis’ spare time, she enjoys watching old movies and, on special occasions, traveling back to the places and the people she loves.

XBIZ Magazine interviewed graduate student Rachael Farina for their November 2021 issue on the topic of burnout and self-care for adult performers. Read the article here (*warning: 18+ adult content).

Sarah Wen attended the UConn Coordinated Dietetics Program, an accelerated program that provided internships consisting of clinical, foodservice, community nutrition, specialty, and research rotations. Sarah Wen graduated Magna Cum Laude and received her Bachelor of Science in Dietetics in 2019.

Shortly after graduating, Sarah Wen became a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN). That summer, she worked as a research technician for Dr. Christopher Blesso from the UConn Nutritional Sciences Department. In this role, she helped with mouse colitis studies and conducted polymerase chain reactions (PCR), among other tasks. In fall 2019, Sarah Wen started new research with Dr. Blesso, focusing on the effects of milk polar lipids (MPLs) on lipid and blood-related parameters such as VLDL, LDL and HDL Cholesterol levels. During her 2-year master’s program, she helped run a MPL clinical study and was the sole RDN for a plant-based clinical study, both within the UConn Nutritional Sciences Department. In addition to coursework and research, Sarah Wen completed a capstone project, The Effects of Dairy Product Consumption on Cardiovascular Disease. In addition, she co-authored a paper, Milk Polar Lipids: Underappreciated Lipids with Emerging Health Benefits, published in Nutrients. Furthermore, Sarah Wen received the Eastern States Exposition Graduate Student Scholarship in fall 2019.

While working on her master’s capstone project, Sarah Wen interned with the UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity under the supervision of Dr. Marlene Schwartz. During this internship, she worked on a project on the summer meal programs in CT, funded by the CT Department of Education. Sarah Wen participated in qualitative data collection that included individual interviews and off-site visits. Additionally, she worked with Dr. Caitlin Caspi from Allied Health Sciences on a Supporting Wellness at Pantries (SWAP) project. SWAP is a stoplight nutrition ranking system that assigns foods as red, yellow, or green depending on saturated fat, sodium, and sugar content, and was specifically designed for use within charitable food systems such as food pantries, to better rank overall food quality. Furthermore, Sarah Wen contributed to a National Institute of Health abstract regarding SWAP research.

Sarah Wen received a master’s in Nutritional Science in 2021 and then joined the HDFS program to work with Dr. Kim Gans. Sarah Wen’s current work focuses on qualitative and quantitative research to inform the design and evaluation of community nutrition interventions that target families and youth in settings like childcare and dental practices. These interventions help improve social and physical environments that influence children’s eating behaviors to prevent obesity, improve health and wellness, and reduce health disparities.

Sarah Wen is very excited to be a part of the HDFS PhD program and begin mixed methods research in community nutrition interventions!

Eleanor Fisk, HDFS doctoral student, was profiled as one of the SRCD State Policy Pre-Doctoral fellows: https://www.srcd.org/news/introducing-2021-2022-srcd-us-policy-fellows

Graduate student Rachael Farina was elected as the board treasurer for the Connecticut Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (CTAMFT). Her term will begin in January of 2022.

Sydney received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from SUNY Geneseo in 2019 and received a Master’s in Psychology from New York University in 2021. She joined the HDFS program in 2021 to work with Dr. Alaina Brenick to examine youth victimization and discrimination experiences in various contexts. Sydney is also interested in how media contributes to the development of stereotyping and discrimination, as well as how we can use media to combat the development of harmful and prejudicial beliefs toward various social groups.

At SUNY Geneseo, Sydney worked in a social cognition lab, examining explicit and implicit bias toward individuals with tattoos in hiring decisions, presenting this research at the 2019 Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Conference in Portland, Oregon. Sydney then developed her own individual project that combined her love of dance and social psychology. Experiences within the dance community led her to identify prominent stereotypes and discrimination in dance, and further motivated her to investigate the psychological bases for these biases. Sydney went on to present this work both at the 2020 SPSP conference and at NYU’s MA research conference, winning 3rd place in the poster competition. Sydney also worked as a lab manager and teaching assistant at Geneseo.

When Sydney arrived at NYU, she became curious about the origins of prejudice and discrimination toward social groups and joined the Conceptual Development and Social Cognition (CDSC) lab at NYU. For her master’s thesis, she performed a content analysis of the quality and quantity of racial representation, stereotypes, and status depictions in popular children’s media, and how children’s media consumption predicted their racial biases overtime. Sydney received NYU’s Model-Mentorship Grant in 2020 to conduct this research. In 2021, Sydney presented this work at the SPSP Annual Conference, and NYU’s MA research conference where she won 2nd place in the poster competition.

Looking ahead, Sydney is excited to join the HDFS family at UConn and begin participating in research that centers on taking an interdisciplinary and developmental approach!

Gradate student Rachael Farina was accepted as a mentor to the NCFR Mentoring Academy

Graduate student Michelle Miller was selected by the Ford Foundation and TCC Group for a graduate fellowship through the American Evaluation Association GEDI Program. Through the fellowship program, Michelle will learn and build upon her evaluation programming skills. Congratulations, Michelle!