Tracy Walters is a PhD candidate who studies sexuality development, including parental messages about sex and adolescents’ and young adults’ sexual attitudes, motives for sex, sexual behavior, and sex-related outcomes and experiences. She primarily conducts quantitative and mixed-methods research related to these interests with her doctoral advisor, Dr. Eva Lefkowitz. Tracy has also collaborated on projects with Drs. Sara Vasilenko and Christina Ross, and members of Dr. Lefkowitz’s DASH lab on topics related to college students’ sex-related consequences, female adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health, and LGBTQ+ college students’ romantic relationships and well-being.

Tracy successfully defended her dissertation in May on correlates of young adults’ sexual behavior and consequences. She wrote three papers using two different young adult samples and a range of methodologies. The findings from these papers advance our knowledge of caregivers’ sex-related messages and young adults’ sex-related consequences and further our understanding of gender identity and sexual orientation differences in these messages and consequences. In particular, the findings highlight the need for, and inform the development of, sexual health resources and interventions for caregivers and youth.

In addition to research, Tracy loves to teach and work with undergraduate students. While at UConn, she had the opportunity to teach Adolescent Development and Diversity Issues in HDFS, as well as advise students in the HDFS Student Services Center. She was recognized for her teaching with the 2021 Outstanding Instructor in Human Development and Family Sciences Award and the 2022 University Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. In the fall, Tracy will continue to pursue her love of teaching as an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Integrated Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater at Rock County.

When she’s not busy with work, Tracy enjoys reading books, traveling, baking, volunteering with an animal rescue (she fostered seven dogs in the last 1.5 years), and spending time with her family, friends, and dog.

Eleanor Fisk completed her Ph.D. in HDFS in Spring 2023. She enrolled in the HDFS program in 2018 to work with Dr. Caitlin Lombardi on research about young children’s cognitive and social emotional development, family resources, and early care and education. During graduate school, Eleanor worked on numerous research projects, including longitudinal studies utilizing secondary data with Dr. Lombardi, a qualitative study on families’ and home visitors’ experiences with virtual home visiting supervised by Dr. Rachel Chazan Cohen, and an evaluation of family engagement and outcomes for a local Head Start agency led by Dr. Beth Russell. These experiences and mentorship helped Eleanor to shape her research interests around understanding the role of contexts in which early childhood development occurs and how programs and policies can support children and families experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage.

Eleanor successfully defended her dissertation in March. In her dissertation, she used multiple methods to understand Early Head Start programs’ service provision to families who enroll prenatally. Findings included a description of the types of services Early Head Start programs typically provide to prenatal families and showed how the availability of those services may be linked with later maternal well-being and child social emotional development. This project allowed Eleanor to expand her methodological experiences to include qualitative data collection from interviews with Early Head Start staff, which provided additional perspective on successes and challenges around providing services prenatally.

In addition to research at UConn, Eleanor completed a Society for Research in Child Development State Policy Pre-Doctoral Fellowship with the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood in 2021-2022. This fellowship gave Eleanor firsthand experience with data-driven policymaking and the role that researchers can play in policymaking, and helped to shape many of her goals around communicating and disseminating research in a way that is accessible and understandable to practitioners and policymakers.

Eleanor recently started a position as a Research Associate at James Bell Associates within their Child and Family Development practice area. She is looking forward to continuing working on applied research and evaluations of programs that support children and families. Outside of work, Eleanor can be found hiking (preferably with a view of the ocean), tending to her ever-growing collection of houseplants, and cooking with local ingredients or trying new restaurants!

Eminet Abebe Gurganus, PhD is a 2023 graduate of the HDFS doctoral program. She entered the program having earned her Bachelor’s and Master of Public Health degrees from Yale University. Her research interests pertain broadly to social determinants of health, with a specific interest in system-level interventions to address health inequities. Working with her advisor, Dr. Marlene Schwartz, she has investigated partnerships between the healthcare system and social services (e.g., food pantries) and how such partnerships can be improved and leveraged to better serve people in need. In her dissertation, she applied qualitative and quantitative methods to study the implementation of referral and linkage processes between healthcare and community-based organizations for patients experiencing needs such as food or housing insecurity.

In addition to her research, Eminet has worked for several years in the healthcare sector. Her roles have included serving as program manager for a children’s hospital’s community health initiatives, health policy associate at a statewide child health policy institute, and director of grantmaking for a foundation focused on health equity. She currently works in the insurance industry as a strategic advisor for health equity.

Outside of work, Eminet enjoys nature walks, birdwatching, cooking, and being mom to her two boys, which she considers a privilege and her most important job.

Congratulations to Makayla Dawkins, Bachelor of Science, Individualized major in Gender, Sexuality, and Reproduction; minor in Human Development and Family Sciences, winner of the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Community Engaged Scholarship – Undergraduate Student Award.

Graduate student Rachael Farina was recently interviewed for Cosmopolitan. Read the article here.

Congratulations to graduate student Lexi Tomkunas, who was awarded a 2023 Wood/Raith Gender Identity Living Trust summer fellowship.

Graduate student Kaleigh Ligus featured as one of the UConn students graduating this Spring. Read the article in UConn Today.

Jessie joined the UConn HDFS masters program in Fall 2022. She previously earned her bachelor’s in HDFS from UConn in May 2022.

As an undergraduate student, Jessie declared her major after taking HDFS 1060 with Dr. Kari Adamsons, who later connected her to her current advisor. Jessie began working with Dr. Rebecca Puhl on her undergraduate honors thesis after expressing an interest in weight stigma and body image. Her thesis used novel quantitative research assessing self-reported retrospective recall of body image, social media usage, exercise behaviors, and eating behaviors before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper is currently under review for publication. This research experience, partnered with Jessie’s love for UConn’s HDFS program, inspired Jessie to pursue her masters in HDFS. Jessie is currently working on her master’s thesis project with Dr. Puhl to examine how being in a romantic partnership is related to weight bias internalization among individuals of higher weight currently engaged in weight loss efforts.

In Jessie’s spare time, she loves to read mystery and fiction books, alpine ski, and run with her roommate. She is also employed with UC Cafes and can usually be found at Crossroads or Bookworms in between classes.