Morica Hutchinson, MA, HDFS Graduate Student

 

Morica (Rica) Hutchison is a prevention scientist and marital family therapist. She studies the connections between emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and mindfulness in community-based samples of youth and young adults deemed at-risk due to mental health and/or substance use diagnoses. Rica first discovered her passion for bolstering mental and behavioral health outcomes as an undergraduate when she completed an honors thesis on the emotional regulation and behavior of adolescents in substance use recovery and participated in an internship at an intensive outpatient program for adolescents focused on group and family-based therapy.

For her dissertation, Rica has been facilitating an eight-session mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) for youth enrolled in community-based outpatient therapy programs. The youth present with diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, ADHD, and a history of suicidal behavior or adverse experiences such as sexual abuse, neglect, multiple/disrupted family and/or foster placements, witness to parental substance use, or domestic violence. Her dissertation examines how MBI’s can support at-risk youth’s development of adaptive coping skills and thwart adverse mental and behavioral health outcomes.

During her time as a doctoral and master’s student, Rica has taught several in-person and online HDFS courses, including: Family Life Education, Research Methods, Honors Proseminar, and Honors Thesis Preparation Seminar.

Following graduation, Rica will become a postdoctoral scholar in suicide prevention at the University of Rochester Department of Psychiatry. This further training will allow her to identify effective prevention strategies and program implementation for at-risk youth and young adults for use in applied settings, including mental health treatment facilities, non-profit organizations providing treatment to high-risk youth and young adults, and other agencies that offer training for child and family services workers. Dissemination of such preventative and intervention strategies will foster adaptive coping skills, reduce the burden of mental health adversities on youth and young adults, and increase access to care coordination for individuals and families presenting with ongoing difficulties.

In her spare time, Rica loves baking, travelling to new places, and adding to her collection of plants. She has three cats (Rae, Goose and Pickles), which keep her entertained while working from home.

Check out Lauryn Ashong’s testimony at the Appropriations Public Hearing on Higher Education Agencies. Lauryn is an HDFS major on the UConn Stamford campus. What an awesome representative of HDFS, Stamford, and UConn. You can listen to her testimony here (should autostart at the right time, but if not, it’s at 1:07:47): https://youtu.be/5CNiQ_Z7svY?t=4067

Sabrina Uva, Undergraduate Honors Student in HDFS at the UConn Stamford campus, received a 2021 Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF) award for her research project titled “The Effect of Anti-Racism Engagement on Emerging Adults’ Psychological Adjustment and Academic Performance During the Coronavirus Pandemic.” Award Amount: $4,500. Faculty Project Supervisor: Associate Professor Annamaria Csizmadia.

The 2021 Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF) award granted to *Abagail Leander, supervised by Associate Professor Beth Russell, to examine barriers to Medication Assisted Treatments for Opioid Use Disorder.

Ciara Collins, MA, HDFS Graduate Student

 

Ciara Collins is a sixth year doctoral student who studies the decision-making processes and subjective wellbeing of emerging adults currently or formerly in foster care. She began her graduate career at UConn in the Marriage and Family Therapy master’s program and is currently pursuing her PhD with an emphasis in Health, Wellbeing, and Prevention, having obtained a Quantitative Research Methods Certificate along the way. During her graduate career, Ciara has utilized quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches for evaluation and intervention studies. She managed projects as a researcher/evaluator with agencies that support children and families, such as Head Start grantees, community social service agencies, and state agencies, including the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF) and the Office of Early Childhood (OEC). Ciara has presented findings from these research projects at national and international conferences, including the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR), the Association for Psychological Science (APS), the National Head Start Association (NHSA), the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC), the Resilience Research Centre’s Pathways to Resilience III Conference, and the Western Psychological Association (WPA). She has also published a book chapter on permanent and formal connections for foster youth with her major advisor, Preston Britner IV, as well as multiple papers with faculty advisor and mentor Beth Russell, including a recently published article in Children and Youth Services Review on the factor structure of the CYRM-12 resilience measure.

Before coming to UConn, Ciara worked at an adoption agency in California as the Embryo Adoption Program Coordinator, which highlighted the family processes and dynamics at work in alternative family building. This experience, coupled with co-leading an orphan care ministry at Biola University, led Ciara to her current line of research, which focuses on the multifaceted experiences of fostered and adopted children and the often nontraditional family structures in which they are members. In addition to this research, Ciara’s evaluation roles have included topics such as: early childhood experiences and education, home visiting programs, school-based trauma initiatives, fatherhood programming, and college prep for youth in foster care. Ciara also has clinical experience working with at-risk youth and families and seeks to incorporate an understanding of mental health and trauma in all her project work.

Ciara started as a senior analyst at Abt Associates in June 2020 where she continues to work on projects in the areas of child welfare, mental health, prevention services, early childhood education, and housing and homelessness.

Kita Karna is an HDFS undergraduate junior who received an IDEA grant to conceptualize and pursue a research study under the mentorship of Associate Professor Alaina Brenick. This grant will fund research exploring “Ethnic Identity Associated with Second-Generation, South Asian Young Adults” during the summer of 2021.

Ellen Pudney, MS, RDN, HDFS Graduate Student

 

Ellen is a fourth year doctoral student. She is also a registered dietitian nutritionist, with a master’s degree in Nutrition and Dietetics from Northern Illinois University, and a bachelor’s degree in Nutritional Sciences from UConn. She will be defending her dissertation, “Parental weight talk with children: The role of stigma and social position,” in February 2021 and will be graduating with her PhD in May 2021. Ellen is interested in pursuing a career in research with the hopes of improving the health of children and families.

For the past four years, Ellen has worked as a research assistant at the UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity where she conducts both quantitative and qualitative research with her academic advisor, Dr. Rebecca Puhl, on topics related to weight stigma. She is particularly interested in parent-child communication about body weight, the factors that influence whether someone internalizes weight stigma, and the influence of weight-centric public health messages on families and child development. Ellen has published several peer-reviewed papers, including one, published in Pediatric Obesity that examines the associations among parental experiences and internalization of weight stigma and their engagement in weight-focused conversations and comments with children. In addition, she has presented her research at several conferences, including the National Council on Family Relations, the Society for Nutrition Education & Behavior, and the Future Directions Forum of the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology.

Prior to pursuing her PhD, Ellen was a Family and Consumer Sciences SNAP-Ed Agent for Virginia Cooperative Extension where she worked with health coalitions, community groups, and school districts to develop policy, system, and environmental changes to reduce health disparities. She is interested in addressing issues related to food insecurity and has experience working as a research assistant for the Northern Illinois Food Bank and the UConn Center for Public Health and Health Policy. Ellen also has experience working as a nutrition consultant for Head Start centers in both Illinois and Virginia.