Sarah McKee graduated from the HDFS doctoral program in May 2023. She joined the graduate program in 2017, earning her master’s degree in 2019. During her training, Sarah worked with Dr. Marlene Schwartz on several research projects studying child nutrition, school wellness, and food insecurity. Specifically, she worked on research examining nutrition and physical activity policy implementation in childcare centers, a program to promote nutritious food choices at food pantries, and Connecticut schools’ distribution of meals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sarah and Dr. Schwartz also worked with state departments of education, examining efforts to improve local school wellness policies in Kansas and providing technical assistance for wellness policy assessment to Connecticut school districts. Additionally, they collaborate with Dr. Sandra Chafouleas in the Neag School of Education to promote the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model of school health.

Sarah successfully defended her dissertation in April on implementing local school wellness policies. She applied qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods to examine various factors influencing schools’ successful implementation of policies that support students’ well-being. In her research, she identified barriers to wellness policy implementation and highlighted strategies that school staff have used to overcome these obstacles.

In addition to conducting research, Sarah taught undergraduate students in Comparative Family Policy for three semesters, was a teaching assistant for Individual and Family Development, and was a graduate assistant for the HDFS College Career Pathways Program and the Honors Program.

Sarah is now a postdoctoral research associate at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health, where she continues to work with Dr. Schwartz. Her current focus is studying and supporting schools in improving their wellness policies and practices and serving summer meals to students. Outside work, Sarah enjoys creating nail art, listening to her vinyl record collection, attending concerts, hiking, and exploring New England with her friends and family.

Congratulations to HDFS graduate student Nate Stekler, newly elected Communications Specialist for the National Council on Family Relations Research (NCFR) and Theory Section.

Alyssa Clark entered the Ph.D. program in Fall 2019 and successfully defended her dissertation in June. She is dedicated to the study of adult romantic relationships, with a focus on LGBTQ+ relationships, physical behaviors, and relationship satisfaction and maintenance, with the goal of promoting healthy and positive relationship experiences. She conducts primarily mixed-methods and qualitative research based on these interests with her doctoral advisor, Dr. Eva Lefkowitz in the DASH lab. Alyssa has also collaborated on projects in the SHINE lab, under the mentorship of Dr. Ryan Watson and Dr. Kay Simon, studying asexual teens’ mental health and school experiences, in addition to the perceptions adult MSM have about how PrEP usage impacts sexual freedom.

Alyssa’s dissertation focused on adults’ sexual and affectionate behaviors in the context of romantic partner relationships. She collected original data to write three papers using both quantitative and qualitative analyses. Overall, results from these papers highlight that adults’ sexual and affectionate behaviors within romantic relationships have similar individual and relational correlates. These results advance our understanding of what factors matter for adults’ physical behaviors and how these behaviors are associated with sexual and relationship satisfaction. They also suggest how clinicians might address physical behaviors and satisfaction in adults’ romantic relationships.

In addition to conducting research while at UConn, Alyssa has also had the privilege of mentoring and teaching students in several HDFS courses, including Infancy Through Adolescence and Family Interaction Processes.

Alyssa is excited for her next professional steps and future endeavors. This fall, she will be joining the College of Wooster’s psychology department as the Walter D. Foss Endowed Visiting Assistant Professor. She will be teaching courses in human sexuality and close relationships, and will be working with students to conduct independent research on LGBTQ+ issues and romantic relationships.

In her spare time, Alyssa enjoys distance biking, cooking, sewing, crocheting, and sharing books with her friends.

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.