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One of my favorite events each year at Ohio State is the Denman Undergraduate Research Forum. In 2015 the Denman forum celebrated its 20th year, with over 600 students from acros the university presenting their research. The forum is supported by OSU’s Undergraduate Research Office, which is a hub for students who are interested in enhancing their undergraduate experience at Ohio State by conducting research. At the URO website, students can connect with researchers looking for student assistants and find funding for their research.

I am always pleased to see the high level of participation of HDFS students, faculty, and staff in undergraduate research. In 2015, HDFS students, faculty, and staff participated in six projects presented at the Denman:

Quinn Bailey, HDFS student, presented “Experiences of adolescents participating in Operation: Military Kids.” Quinn’s advisors are Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan and Sarah Lang (HDFS), and Theresa Ferrari (OSU Extension).

Rachel Garcia, Emily Sorrenti, and Divya Ramoo

Rachel Garcia, HDFS student, presented “Extending the definition of quality childcare: Preschool teachers’ general psychological and job-related wellbeing.” Her co-authors were two Psychology students: Emily Sorrenti and Divya Ramoo. Their advisors are Cynthia Buettner and Lieny Jeon (HDFS). Rachel, Emily, and Divya’s poster received a second-place prize in the Psychology category.

Treg Mallory, HDFS student, presented “Youth sport participation.” Treg’s advisor is Mike Betz (HDFS).

Colin McGinnis, HDFS student, presented “Caregiver and teacher ratings regarding young children’s development: Validity and factors predictive of disagreement.” Colin’s advisor is Shayne Piasta (T&L). Colin’s poster received a third-place prize in the Business/Education and Human Ecology/Speech and Hearing Science category. 

Olivia Zimmer

Marilyn Wende, Psychology student, presented “Maternal depression and autobiographical memory in mothers and their children.” Marilyn’s advisor is Xin Feng (HDFS).

Olivia Zimmer, HDFS student, presented “Pediatric obesity treatment programs: Unique contextual and economic factors.” Olivia’s advisor is Keeley Pratt (HDFS).

[We look forward to having Rachel Garcia and Olivia Zimmer join us as new doctoral students this fall!]

In addition, four faculty or research staff members were nominated by students for the 2015 Outstanding and Distinguished Undergraduate Research Mentor Awards: Xin Feng, Sarah Lang, Keeley Pratt, and Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan.

And last but not least, I saw numerous HDFS faculty and staff members, and even a number of our graduate students, judging at the Denman forum.

This is an impressive level of involvement, especially for a modest-sized program. These research experiences mean a lot to students – In the words of Quinn Bailey, ““This has been the highlight of my undergraduate education.”

Recently I was at an academic leadership retreat where we had a discussion about mentoring. I tend to view teaching and mentoring of students through the lens of parenting – not only do I study parenting, I am also a parent to an 8-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old son! Not everyone will agree that relationships with students are (or should be) like parent-child relationships, but I feel the parallels are striking. If you’re willing to concede this point, then you will likely understand why I cannot help but apply what research says about good parenting to effective teaching and mentoring of students. Here are some “dos” and “don’ts” from the world of parenting research applied to relationships with students:

DO

• Master perspective-taking. To be an effective teacher and mentor you need to see things from the student’s perspective. Get to know your students. Remember what it is like to be in college or in graduate school. For example, I can remember skipping class and reading the newspaper during boring classes in college. I even fell asleep in a graduate course. While admitting this causes me more than a bit of embarrassment now, these experiences help me have more empathy for students when they are tempted to surf the internet during class or seem clueless about proper email etiquette.
• Use induction. Always explain the reasons behind what you do or are asking students to do. “You are doing this observation assignment because…” “I am asking you to turn in a hard copy because…” Especially with respect to graduate students, you want them to internalize what you are teaching them. “Yes, I know it stinks, but you need to redo these analyses for the zillionth time because we want to get this right. When this article is published it becomes part of the scientific record and we don’t want to contribute anything less than our best effort.”
• Set routines and spend quality time together. Good parenting is not haphazard, nor does it happen primarily via email. Relationships with students benefit from regularly scheduled face-to-face meetings that go beyond scheduling courses or completing paperwork. Set goals, discuss ideas, or work on a paper together – in the same space at the same time whenever possible.
• Establish appropriate boundaries. Spending quality time together does not mean unloading on a student about your recent divorce or doing tequila shots together on Friday night at the local campus bar. I personally have a rule that I will not accept Facebook friend requests from students until they have graduated. Also, just as a good parent does not triangulate a child in inter-parental conflict, a good mentor does not badmouth colleagues and other students in front of their own students. Keep it classy, people.
• Keep your eye on the prize. What are your ultimate, “big picture” goals for your students and how are your teaching and mentoring practices helping your students get there? Remember that as much as you love them or as valuable as they are to you, the purpose of teaching and mentoring is to equip students to venture out on their own. Please – let Rapunzel out of her (ivory) tower – and be gracious when she finds her own happiness.

DON’T

• Repeat the errors of the past. If you did not benefit from high-quality mentorship as a student, you are especially vulnerable to faltering in relationships with your own students. Be vigilant – early trauma runs deep. If you find yourself saying things like “When I was a kid I had to walk uphill to school both ways” alarm bells should go off in your head. I know many colleagues who have bounced back from horrible mentoring experiences to become some of the best mentors around. But, that takes intentionality and persistence.
• Assume the worst. Have you ever suspected your child was fibbing about washing her hands after going potty, but you check and her hands are wet? Child likely says, “See, I told you, Mommy!” and sulks off to her room. You feel like an untrusting jerk. Remember – that student’s plagiarism might be accidental or a misunderstanding, and perhaps that other student’s grandmother really did pass away the night before the final exam. Give people the benefit of the doubt. If you give people the benefit of the doubt they will return the favor when you need it – and we all need it sometimes.
• Force autonomy too soon. There will always be someone you know who claims they learned how to swim because their dad threw them in the pool. However, that is dangerous. We don’t want any student (or child) to drown. Scaffold students – push them to stretch their skills – and gradually, ever so gradually – remove your supports.
• Play favorites. It is completely appropriate to treat students with different levels of experience and expertise differently, just as you would have different expectations for a 2-year-old and an 8-year-old. Even small children get this. The problem comes in when children (or students) perceive the differential treatment as unfair. Reflect periodically on the opportunities and resources you offer to students and make sure you are treating students equitably.
• Abandon them. Fortunately, most academics I know take their roles as teachers and mentors seriously. However, sometimes student-faculty relationships don’t work out. This is a very frightening situation – especially for graduate students – who may have moved far from friends and family to work with you and who depend on you for education and funding. Even if you have a valid reason to cease working with a student, you really must commit to helping the student find an acceptable substitute who is willing to invest in them.

Finally, just as with parenting, the rewards of strong teaching and mentoring are mostly intangible. No one will be there to pat you on the back when you refrained from yelling at your tantruming toddler in Target. Don’t let the fact that your a**hole colleague who treats his students like crap just sailed through tenure and promotion make you disillusioned with the promise of faculty-student relationships. Advocate for administrators to take faculty members’ teaching and mentoring efforts as seriously as they do journal article publishing and grantsmanship. But, if you develop and sustain strong relationships with students, you will reap the rewards. You will surely be blessed with the opportunity to celebrate their accomplishments, meet their dogs, attend their weddings, and hold their babies. And, when it becomes developmentally appropriate, they will be there to celebrate and support you in return.

For the second year in a row, research by our faculty and students is being recognized as the best work on men in families.

Every year, the Men in Families focus group of the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) reviews the top journals in the field and identifies all of the articles published on men in families during the last calendar year by NCFR members. The articles are divided into those lead-authored by students/new professionals and those written by more seasoned scholars. Next, the articles are reviewed and ranked by experts in the field, and three finalists are chosen from each group.

For the student/new professionals category, two out of the three finalists are articles authored by OSU-HDFS students or graduates and faculty members:

Kotila, L. E., & Kamp Dush, C. M. (2013). Involvement with children and low-income fathers’ psychological well-being. Fathering, 11, 306-326. doi: 10.3149/fth.1103.306

Zvara, B. J., Schoppe-Sullivan, S. J., & Kamp Dush, C. M. (2013). Fathers’ involvement in child health care: Associations with prenatal involvement, parents’ beliefs, and maternal gatekeeping. Family Relations, 62, 649-661. doi: 10.1111/fare.12023

For the seasoned scholars category, one of the three finalist articles was lead-authored by Dr. James Bates, an Assistant Professor of OSU Extension in Family & Consumer Sciences affiliated with HDFS:

Bates, J. S., & Taylor, A. C. (2013). Grandfather involvement: Contact frequency, participation in activities, and commitment. Journal of Men’s Studies, 21, 305-322. doi: 10.3149/jms.2103.305

The winners in each category will be announced at the Men in Families focus group meeting at the NCFR annual conference in Baltimore in November.

Both of last year’s winning articles were also produced by OSU HDFS graduate students, faculty, and affiliates:

Bates, J. S., & Taylor, A. C. (2012). Grandfather involvement and aging men’s mental health. American Journal of Men’s Health, 6, 229-239. doi: 10.1177/1557988311430249

Jia, R., Kotila, L. E., & Schoppe-Sullivan, S. J. (2012). Transactional relations between father involvement and preschoolers’ socioemotional adjustment.Journal of Family Psychology, 26, 848-857.

Rongfang Jia completed her Ph.D. in HDFS in Spring 2014 under the supervision of Dr. Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan and she is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Miami working with Dr. Daniel Messinger.

Letitia E. Kotila is a Ph.D. candidate in HDFS. She is co-advised by Dr. Claire Kamp Dush and Dr. Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan. Letitia’s latest work on men in families, “The De(Institutionalized) Father,” is being recognized this year with the 2014 Outstanding Ohio Graduate Student Presentation Award by the Ohio Council on Family Relations and the 2014 Research and Theory Section of NCFR Best Conference Proposal by a Student/New Professional Award.

Bharathi J. Zvara received her M.S. in HDFS under the supervision of Dr. Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan and then went on to recently receive her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

The men in the Schoppe/Sullivan family

In the HDFS graduate program, we encourage our students to apply for funding to support their graduate studies, and faculty support their students’ efforts by mentoring students in crafting their proposals. Fellowships allow students more time to pursue their own research interests, and/or provide students the opportunity to expand their developing expertise into new areas of scholarship or application.

This academic year, we are pleased to highlight 5 students whose graduate studies are supported by prestigious fellowships:

Brittany Brakenhoff

Ashley Hicks

Brittany Brakenhoff (advisor: Natasha Slesnick) and Ashley Hicks (advisor: Tasha Snyder) were both awarded minority fellowships from the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. These fellowships offer students supplemental funding to pursue clinical work and professional development related to their research and outreach with underserved populations.

Rachel Brown, Diandra Gordon, and Sara Sandberg-Thoma (advisor: Claire Kamp Dush). Rachel Brown won a prestigious 3-year National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship that will support her emerging program of research on marital expectations. Diandra Gordon received funding from the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship program for her Family Time Initiative, a weekly evening program designed to foster cultural health in Near East Columbus and educate, empower, and strengthen families to make healthier choices.

Diandra Gordon

Rachel Brown

Sara Sandberg-Thoma

Sara Sandberg-Thoma’s important research on mental health, casual romantic relationships, union formation, and emerging adulthood is supported by a College of Education and Human Ecology Dissertation Research Fellowship, which will allow her to focus on her dissertation this year.

Congratulations to these students and their supportive advisors! We are proud of you!

One of the foundational ideas of Human Development and Family Science is that people do not develop in a vacuum – their development is shaped not only by inherited characteristics and predispositions but also directly by the different environments they inhabit and indirectly via forces that act on those environments.

We are often quick to blame parents when children develop problems, and much research on parenting is directed at uncovering the effects of “good” and “bad” parenting on children. However, we must remember that the adults raising children are not exempt from the effects of their own biological and social environments. Especially key to effective parenting is adults’ mental health.

HDFS faculty and students continue to make important contributions to understanding the role of mental health in parenting. Faculty member Xin Feng has long studied the ways in which depressed mothers’ interactions with their children differ from those of non-depressed mothers. And, in an intriguing new study, faculty members Natasha Slesnick and Xin Feng, along with graduate student Brittany Brakenhoff and collaborator Gregory Brigham, examined the role of substance use in mothers’ parenting and found that although all substance using mothers struggled with parenting, alcohol-using mothers demonstrated more negative parenting than opioid-using mothers.

Moreover, recent research by HDFS post-doc Lieny Jeon and faculty members Cynthia Buettner and Tasha Snyder has extended knowledge regarding the important role of adult mental health to teachers. In an article just published in the prestigious Journal of Counsulting and Clinical Psychology, Lieny and her colleagues showed that preschool teachers’ depression is associated with young children’s behavior problems, in part indirectly through the quality of the child care environment. Read the OSU press release here: http://news.osu.edu/news/2014/05/13/preschool-teacher-depression-linked-to-behavioral-problems-in-children/

One of my favorite quotes, attributed to John Bowlby, is: “If a community values its children it must cherish their parents.”

I propose that to this sentiment, we must add: “and their teachers!”

One of the greatest things about our HDFS graduate students is that they are not only productive researchers (which is the focus of our program, after all) but also dedicated teachers and engaged citizens of the University and community. This Spring, the Human Sciences Department recognized two of our graduate students with awards:

Mitchell K. Bartholomew, the Human Sciences Graduate Student Teaching Award, for his innovative, engaging, and effective teaching that incorporates cutting-edge technology.

Sarah N. Lang, the Human Sciences Graduate Student Service Award, for her commitment to the Council of Graduate Students at Ohio State and her active participation in governance and curriculum decision-making at the University level.

From left to right: Mitchell and Sarah (the award winners), me, and two of my other students Tracy and Lauren (future award winners, I’m certain!)

Warmest congratulations to the following graduate students who successfully defended their dissertations this semester:

• Mitchell Bartholomew
• Christin Carotta
• Rachel Eun Hye Hur
• Rongfang Jia

We wish you all the best in your future endeavors!

Welcome to my blog highlighting the accomplishments of faculty and students in the Human Development and Family Science program within the Department of Human Sciences at Ohio State. I invite you to celebrate with me all of the wonderful contributions that members of the HDFS program make to understanding and improving the lives of individuals, families, and communities.