Emma Thomas and Meagan Mathews win research expo awards

HDFS master's student, Meagan Mathews, was recently awarded first place in the Social Sciences category of the 2012Graduate Research & Creativity Expo for her poster, titled, "Pregnant Mothers' Reactions to InfantCries Predict Breastfeeding Duration." Her poster examined data from the Infant Parent Project and describedthe unique relationship between first-time pregnant mothers' emotional responsesto videos of babies crying, and the subsequent length of time they breastfedtheir own infants. Mathews, a student of Dr. Esther Leerkes, is excited tocontinue researching predictors of initiation and duration of breastfeeding throughout her graduate career.

Undergraduate HDFS student Emma Thomas also won an award at the Undergraduate Research Expo, which was held April 12th. Emma's poster was titled: Evaluation of the ARTmail Senior Art Project.

Congratulations to both students!

Ph.D Student Nicole Perry awarded CDS Fellowship

HDFS fourth-year MS/Ph.D student Nicole Perry has been selected as a Predoctoral Fellow at the Carolina Consortium on Human Development at the Center for Developmental Science at UNC-Chapel Hill for 2012-2013. The fellowship comes with a generous stipend and an allowance for tuition. The selection of candidates is based not only on their academic record but also on their interest in developmental science and opportunities for interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration.

There are four key features to the Consortium Predoctoral Training Program: (1) Consortium Predoctoral Advisory Committee, (2) Consortium Proseminars, (3) Supervised/Collaborative Research, and (4) Consortium and Individual Courses. This is the second time in two years that an HDFS student has been selected for a CDS fellowship. We are immensely proud of Nicole and her accomplishments. Congratulations, Nicole!

Helms Receives UNCG Teaching Excellence Award

The HDFS Department is proud to announce that Dr. Heather Helms has been awarded the UNCG Alumni Teaching Excellence Award for a Tenured Faculty Member, for 2011-12. The award is based on teaching evaluations, a statement of teaching philosophy, letters of recommendation from current and former students, and class syllabi. Dr. Helms has been a professor at UNCG since 2000. She is a passionate teacher and advocate for her students. Dr. Helms will be honored at the State of the Campus address in August. Congratulations, Dr. Helms!

Buehler/O'Brien article featured on APA website

The American Psychological Association has selected an article by two HDFS faculty for a national press release. The article, written by Dr. Cheryl Buehler and Dr. Marion O'Brien, is entitled: "Mothers' Part-Time Employment: Associations With Mother and Family Well-Being." It was recently published in APA's Journal of Family Psychology. The article is posted on the APA website.

Dr. Coard presents President with national task force report

Excerpt from Sept 23, 2011 edition of the UNCG Campus Weekly:

It’s not often that a college professor, after heading up a national task force, has the opportunity to place the resulting report in the hands of the President of the United States.

Dr. Stephanie Irby Coard, an Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, did just that, handing the report, “Resilience in African American children and adolescents: A vision for optimal development,” to President Barack Obama during his visit to Raleigh on Wednesday, Sept. 14. Written by the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Task Force on Resilience and Strength in Black Children and Adolescents, the report (http://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/task-force/resilience-af-am.aspx) encourages a major shift from an emphasis on risk to exploring the complex interactive process of resilience in African American youth.

The task force recommended how the problems faced by African American children and youth should be addressed in the areas of research, practice, education, and policy. It sets a new vision for optimal development in African American youth in the contexts of peers, families, schools and communities, involving the broad areas of identity development, emotional development, social development, cognitive development and physical health and development.

So Coard’s goal was getting the report into the hands of the President. Coard and other members of the Task Force have been disseminating the report since it was released in Fall 2008. She recently found out that persistence does indeed pay off when she was invited to attend Obama’s speech in Raleigh. “I have ‘pushed’ this report in any outlet that I could and have stuck with it. I finally got a plug from a connection who recognized how passionate I was about the report’s content and how hard I had been pushing it,” said Coard. I was surprised to be invited to see him speak at N.C. State University on Wednesday. I was in shock.”

“The invitation came from a member of the President’s staff, who told that there was no guarantee that I would meet him personally. However, I was guaranteed that he would receive the report. This was not planned at all; as a matter of fact everything was very last minute and very specifically detailed. I accomplished my goal and I am beyond thrilled about it.”

The report began making the rounds in Congress in fall 2008, when the APA’s Public Interest Government Relations Office distributed 200 copies of the report at the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference and distributed the report to all 42 members of the caucus. “When you look at the research on black teens and adolescents, the majority of studies tend to be deficit focused,” Coard said. “We know a lot about black teen violence, a lot about black teens and pregnancy, a lot about educational disparities. What we don’t know much about is the resilience and strengths of African American youth thriving even in the face of adversity. We know about the negative things but we don’t know much at all about the kids who are doing well and why they’re doing well.

“What we wrote proposes a Portrait of Resilience’, what is making kids thrive in the midst of adversity. We asked, ‘What does this look like?’ We were challenging researchers, policymakers, practitioners, educators and funders to shift their lens and look at these children not at-risk but at-promise.”
Coard had worked with the PI-GRO staff, the foundation and the Congressional Black Caucus staff to have a congressional resolution sponsored, based on the report. In 2009, the report got a boost from Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL), who used it as the basis for his resolution recognizing the importance of fostering resilience in African American youth. Â Co-sponsors with Hastings were Reps. Sheila Jackson-Lee and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX); Grace F. Napolitano and Barbara Lee (D-CA); and Donna Christensen (D-Virgin Islands).

“The resolution served as a statement of the House or Senate's position on the issue and places moral weight behind changes in public policy,” said Coard. “It was a powerful tool in APA's future advocacy on Capitol Hill on specific legislation that directly affects African American youth.”

Coard joined UNCG in 2006, coming from Duke University where she was a Research Scientist in the Center for Child and Family Policy. Her research interests are prevention of conduct disorder, aggression and violence; racial, ethnic and cultural influences on youth and families; racial socialization processes, racial identity development; and practical and culturally relevant approaches to parenting.

Today Show features recent findings by Drs. O'Brien and Buehler

Congratulations to Dr. Marion O'Brien and Dr. Cheryl Buehler! Their research on part-time working mothers, recently published in the Journal of Family Psychology, was featured on the Today Show website: http://moms.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/24/8470547-do-part-time-working-moms-have-the-best-gig-around.

Shuntay McCoy Elected President of UNCG Graduate Student Association

We are proud to announce that Ph.D student Shuntay McCoy has been elected President of the UNCG Graduate Student Association for the 2011-2012 academic year. The Graduate Association includes graduate student representatives from across the university's graduate programs. The GSA also appoints delegates to faculty and staff senates as well as other committees and groups throughout the university. They annually award over $30,000 to assist with graduate student travel and work on theses and dissertations. Shuntay has served on the GSA as the representative from Human Development and Family Studies for several years. Congratulations, Shuntay!

Leerkes Awarded Five-Year NIH Grant

The HDFS Department extends congratulations to Dr. Esther Leerkes. Dr. Leerkes is a co-investigator of a new five-year, 2.9 million dollar NIH grant entitled Nonstandard Maternal Work Schedules and Child Health in Impoverished Families. This project is a collaborative effort involving the Wake Forest University School of Medicine (Joseph Grzywacz, Co-PI) and UNCG's Center for Youth, Family and Community Partnerships (Stephanie Daniel, Co-PI) and Department of Human Development and Family Studies. Parents in impoverished families, particularly mothers, are over-represented in jobs requiring a nonstandard schedule (i.e., work schedules that exist outside the Monday thru Friday, 8 - 5 norm). The goal of this project is to understand the threat of nonstandard maternal work schedules to poor children's physical and emotional well-being as precursors to school readiness. The project will recruit economically disadvantaged mothers and their infants when children are 3 months of age and follow them until children are 30 months. The project is designed to 1) determine if children's physical health and emotional well-being at 30 months differ among those whose mothers had a job requiring a nonstandard schedule in the first year relative to those with a standard schedule; 2) quantify the degree to which variation in parenting practices and maternal well-being explain differences in children's physical health and emotional well-being by maternal work schedules; and 3) identify individual, familial, and social factors that promote children's resilience among women working nonstandard work schedules. The project's results will provide needed information to help parents protect at-risk children and inform potential policy solutions. Drs. Chris Payne, Charles Randall Clinch, and Beth Reboussin are also coinvestigators on this grant.