Exciting Course Offerings
We offer exciting courses each year that address cutting-edge issues. Often this is done using the HDF 602 course number (special topics). Here are some recent and forthcoming examples:
- African American Families
- Children, Poverty, and Policy
- Immigrant Families
- Psychobiology in Human Development and Family Processes
- Race, Class, and Culture
- Relationships across the Life Span
- Work and Family
Vira Kivett Award
Each year, one of the HDFS graduate students is awarded the Vira R. Kivett Outstanding Graduate Publication Award. This award was created by a former HDFS faculty member to recognize the best student journal publication of the year. Bethany Blair won the Kivett Award in 2011-2012 for this publication:
Blair, B. L., & Fletcher, A. C. (2011). “The only 13-year-old on planet earth without a cell phone”: Meanings of cell phones in early adolescents’ everyday lives. Journal of Adolescent Research, 26, 155-177.
Abstract: Cellular telephones have become an increasingly prevalent feature of contemporary American life, with usage often beginning during early adolescence. With this in mind, twenty 7th graders and their mothers participated in separate qualitative interviews regarding early adolescents' use of cell phones as well as perceived risks and benefits of such use. Analyses indicated that early adolescents and their mothers imbued cell phones with a variety of psychological meanings. These meanings included cell phones as a source of connection to family and friends, cell phones as facilitators of adolescent autonomy development, and cell phones as sources of social status. These findings are discussed in relation to psychosocial developmental tasks occurring in early adolescence.
Bethany spent one year of her doctoral study in Finland on a Fulbright Scholarship. She currently is completing her doctoral dissertation, "A Dyadic Approach to the Study of Maternal Influence on Children's Friendship Quality," using national data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. She also is the project coordinator for the RIGHT Track Study, a longitudinal project examining emotion regulation and development over time (Dr. Susan Calkins, Principal Investigator).
