Preparing the Next Generation of Family Science Scholars and Instructors

The judging panel was impressed by how Alan C. Taylor, a tenured professor within the Department of Human Development and Family Science (HDFS) at East Carolina University, has developed an innovative and unique graduate-level instructor preparation program, which provides students with a hands-on and deeply immersive opportunity to learn the principles of effective instruction. This program trains students who are interested at teaching at the undergraduate level. Program participants meet with Dr. Taylor regularly to discuss active way to move beyond the typical lecture and better connect with students. Participants teach three to four lectures in their assigned classes and after each one, they meet with Dr. Taylor to discuss what worked well and as ways to improve their next lecture. We believe this constructive, practical feedback is building and molding the next generation of instructors.

Dr. Taylor’s dedication to innovative teaching doesn’t stop with his graduate-level instructor preparation program. Last year, he taught one of the largest classes offered in the HDFS Department at East Carolina University, “Marriage and Family Relations,” with over 125 students enrolled. Despite the shift to online teaching amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Taylor made it a priority to personally connect with his students and ensure they got the most out of the course. Within the class, students are challenged to examine their past relationships, evaluate their present relationships, and look for ways to improve their future relationships. His teaching incorporates role plays and real-life examples to which students can relate and apply directly to their current situations. His students share that his class discussions and activities have influence them to improve their personal and family relationships and discover ways to strengthen their dating relationships.

In his “Research, Teaching, and Leadership Experience in HDFS” course, students learn how to start and complete a mini-research project. Dr. Taylor leads them through the process until the presentation/publication stage, which results in student co-authorship. Within the past year, he has trained and mentored four advanced HDFS undergraduate students, involving them in his research and training them as effective teaching assistants.

Students enrolled in Dr. Taylor’s “Introduction to Children, Family, and Community Services” course get the opportunity to experience service-learning at a local nonprofit community partner location. Fifteen hours of community service are required, and reflection activities help students connect their experiences to the family life education course content. His course is strategically designed to help students learn family life education core concepts and principles while also helping them develop a sense of empathy and compassion for others through service. 

Alan C. Taylor, Ph.D., CFLE is an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at East Carolina University (ECU). He received his master’s degree in family life education/family science from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. in family and child development from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Dr. Taylor has taught family life education and family relationship curriculum at the university level for over 25 years. He has taught over 25 different human development and family science academic courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Since 2013, Dr. Taylor has also led 14 different ECU study abroad programs to multiple countries around the world. He has worked within the community as a family life educator in state prison settings and as a court-mandated parenting instructor.

This summer, Dr. Taylor coedited the second edition of Family Life Education with Diverse Populations with Sharon Ballard, which will be available in 2022. He is also the coeditor of Global Perspectives on Family Life Education with Mihaela Robila. Dr. Taylor has authored/co-authored over 40 journal articles and book chapters related to the fields of family science and family life education. His scholarly research examines grandfather involvement/grandfather-grandchild relationships, best practices in family life education and pedagogy, and young adult romantic relationship development.

Supporting LGBTQPIA+ Education, Safety, and Dialogue In and Out of the Classroom

The judging panel was impressed by how Dee Hill-Zuganelli, an assistant professor of child and family studies at Berea College, leveraged remote teaching technology and online communication platforms to help students evaluate safety and sense of belonging among LGBTQPIA+ minoritized students. As part of a seminar course called “Sexuality in Everyday Life,” a capstone project involved soliciting first-person perspectives with consent and combining them with personal observations to determine ratings for campus safety. Dr. Hill-Zuganelli trained students on using the Whiteboard and Annotate features within Zoom during a live demonstration, shared a campus map, and instructed students to annotate “safe zones” on campus and share relevant factors in their evaluations as part of a broad group discussion.

Having set ground rules for making the class a brave space, Dr. Hill-Zuganelli asked students who have disclosed LGBTQPIA+ membership to lead the discussion and for their heterosexual peers to listen attentively. Students shared vicarious and secondhand information that aligned with safe, unsafe, and neutral zones. Without prompting, students initiated further discussion of unwelcome campus-community contacts on nearby campus streets and lots (deeming the bulk of those places unsafe).

With permission, Dr. Hill-Zuganelli shared key themes and testimonials confidentially with members of the campus LGBTQPIA+ issues task force and prepared a report on the learning activity.  The task force is now following this teaching template to host in-person and online student forums on appraising LGBTQPIA+ safety.

Dr. Hill-Zuganelli is instrumental in crafting and teaching culturally and sexually inclusive curricula at Berea College that forges connection and allyship between LGBTQPIA+ and heterosexual students and helps the latter break down biases that may negatively impact their future work in the helping professions.

Dee Hill-Zuganelli is an assistant professor of child and family studies at Berea College. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology, a graduate teaching certificate, and a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Arizona, as well as an additional master’s degree in family studies with concentration in marriage and family therapy from the University of Kentucky. Dr. Hill-Zuganelli’s areas of research include cultural humility, diverse family structures, ethical minority families, family engagement, LGBTQ+ families, organizational studies, and relationship dissolution.

Ensuring Students Receive an International Experience before Graduating—Even During a Global Pandemic 

The judging panel was impressed by how Kerry Weil Tripp, a principal lecturer in the Department of Family Science at the University of Maryland, created the university’s Virtual Global Internship Program, which allows students to engage with international researchers and businesses, as well as local partners working with international populations. Through this program, students have had the opportunity to conduct global research on topics ranging from environmental justice to COVID-19 contract tracing in Africa. Dr. Weil Tripp spearheaded a collaboration with Seoul National University (SNU) and UMD’s Ag/Extension program; now, UMD students help SNU faculty research about Korean-American families, and SNU students compare childhood education standards in both countries. During the first year of the Virtual Global Internship Program, Dr. Weil Tripp supported the creation of over 50 virtual internships opportunities.

Additionally, when her Cuba study abroad class was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Weil Tripp created an online global classroom, “Assisted Reproduction Law and Policy in the U.S. and Brazil.” Students from UMD and the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro use Zoom to facilitate class discussion and projects to promote cross-cultural learning and international research and understanding. The class is open to all to encourage other disciplines to study the family, increasing its impact. During the two pilot classes in 2021, students noted how lucky they were to have this international experience while in lockdown in their home countries and how it helped to mitigate the inability to learn via travel during the pandemic.

Kerry Weil Tripp, J.D. is a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School and practiced law in San Francisco and Baltimore before joining academia. She is a principal lecturer in the Department of Family Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She teaches undergraduate and graduate law classes, including a study abroad comparative family law class in Havana, Cuba, and a virtual law and ethics course on assisted reproduction technologies in conjunction with the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Moving the Discipline Forward at the Local and Global Levels

The judging panel was impressed by how Rosemary William Eustace, a tenured associate professor within the College of Nursing and Health at Wright State University, has translated family concepts to her nursing courses in order to emphasize the vital role of family in health and health care. Her personal scholarship and innovative teaching approaches have illuminated this critical facet of health care for her students and, in doing so, demonstrated the need for the Family Science discipline to continue to move forward in dynamic and contemporary ways.

Within her courses, Dr. Eustace leverages findings from her pilot study on the meaning of family interventions among acute care nurses to emphasize the importance of family assessment, collaboration, and family outcomes in nursing practice. She facilitates cross-cultural learning by assigning a scholarly paper on a family-focused assessment and a group assignment on local cultural groups such African American, Jewish, military, and Amish families. These assignments are guided by concepts from the Neuman’s System Model and aim at enriching students’ cultural competency in family nursing care, which better prepares them for holistic, compassionate and inclusive practice.

Outside the classroom, Dr. Eustace facilitates practical learning opportunities via home visits at both the local and global level. At the local level, she coordinates students’ community clinical experiences in home health nursing. At the global level, she organizes students’ home-based interviews with HIV clients and their families in Tanzania. She also coordinates cultural immersion opportunities for students that include attending local family weddings, religious observations, and other unique family-based events.

Recently, Dr. Eustace and her colleagues designed and implemented a family health promotion simulation in the college’s undergraduate public health course, the first of its kind within the nursing program. The simulation introduces students to the application of the family genogram and ecomap in family nursing practice and the role of family in health promotion within the context of the larger community.

Rosemary William Eustace, R.N., Ph.D., PHNA-BC teaches courses in family and community health nursing, global health service learning, and critical reasoning in systems thinking. She also leads the Tanzania Global Study Abroad program for the university and was a 2017 Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow. Dr. Eustace holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in family life education from Kansas State University, as well as a M.S. in community health-clinical nurse specialist from Wright State University.  She is an active member of the nursology.net website management team, a repository for resources about nursing knowledge development.

Introducing an Intersectional Perspective to Family Theories Courses

The judging panel was impressed by how Brian G. Ogolsky, an associate professor and director of graduate programs in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has updated and revolutionized his family theories course to introduce an intersectional perspective that reflects the complex diversity of modern families. Intersectionality is now woven throughout the course to draw attention to how disparities, marginalization, and privilege manifest, as well as how diverse identities are viewed or affected by processes outlined in each of the major, classic family science theories. Dr. Ogolsky’s innovative redevelopment of this course created the opportunity for him to inform other family scholars about the need for diverse perspectives in family science at the teaching conference of the Family Science Association in 2017.

In addition, to provide his students with a more interactive learning environment, Dr. Ogolsky has “flipped” his Advanced Statistics and Close Relationship courses over the past year. To build effective flipped courses, he revised and recorded lecture material for students to watch prior to class. He developed interactive learning modules for each in-class session. Finally, he redesigned the assessment structure of the courses to allow for more dynamic assignments that allow student to demonstrate a wider breadth of skills.

Last fall, Dr. Ogolsky became the Director of Graduate Programs within his department, and his colleagues are quick to laud his excellent leadership within this new role. Dr. Ogolsky has begun new initiatives focused on attracting new applicants, enhancing the qualifying exam process, and fostering community among graduate students and faculty. These efforts demonstrate Dr. Ogolsky’s ongoing dedication to advancing the family sciences discipline, engaging students and educators in novel ways, and providing innovative leadership to all who work with him.

Brian G. Ogolsky, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as an affiliate faculty member in the university’s Family Law and Policy program. He holds a Ph.D. and a M.S. in family studies and human development from the University of Arizona.

Providing Students Opportunities to Build Their Intercultural Competence

The judging panel was impressed by how Jacquelyn Wiersma-Mosley, a tenured associate professor at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, parlayed her experience teaching large introductory courses on family relations and adolescent development into the creation of a new course with focus on multicultural families. This course increases students’ awareness of their own ethnic identities, reflects on families from a diverse array of cultures, and develops critical thinking skills needed to effectively engage with people from different cultures. To increase ethnic identity among her primarily affluent white students, Dr. Wiersma-Mosley uses Ancestry.com’s DNA analysis as an innovative and unique way for students to understand where they came from. It also provides students with empirical data of their genetic ethnicity using DNA for an assigned genealogy project.

Additionally, she became a trained administrator in the Intercultural Development Inventory so she could assess her students’ intercultural competency learning in her course and examine the impact of her curriculum. She provides students with the opportunity to “choose their own adventure” where they choose what activities and assignments they feel will increase their intercultural competence. As part of this program, students analyze media content, write papers about historical figures, examine cultural issues in the news, reflect on their own ethnic identity and genealogy, attend cultural events, and write reflection papers on their own stereotypes, privileges, and implicit biases.

Dr. Wiersma-Mosley is using this knowledge to develop a new course, Introduction to Cultural Competence, to provide students with new, innovative, and effective activities that increase intercultural competence. The course will be part of the general education curriculum on campus, which highlights family science as an important element in education.

Jacquelyn D. Wiersma-Mosley, Ph.D. is a tenured associate professor of human development and family sciences in the School of Human Environmental Sciences at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. She holds a Ph.D. in human development and family studies from Texas Tech University and a M.S. in family studies and human development from Arizona State University.

A Commitment to Community and Collaboration

The judging panel was impressed by how Melissa Landers-Potts, a senior lecturer of human development and family science at the University of Georgia, has leveraged the concepts of community and collaboration to significantly expand the reach of her teaching practices and provide her students with dynamic, applied learning opportunities.

Most notably, Dr. Landers-Potts established a partnership with Prevail Health, a company that offers online peer mentoring and mental health services for youth. Through an interface designed especially for her course, Dr. Landers-Potts’ students receive online wellness coaching training and then serve as online peer wellness coaches for 13-25 year old clients around the globe. This innovative approach provides students with the flexibility to complete service learning remotely, at any time during the week; an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of young people all over the world; and a global perspective and greater understanding of how culture impacts family environment. Additionally, the incorporation of human development material from Dr. Landers-Potts’ course so greatly improved the quality of wellness coaching through Prevail Health, the company modified their peer mentor training to include content directly from Dr. Landers-Potts’ course.

In addition, Dr. Landers-Potts has established a relationship with an alternative high school at which her students provide tutoring; created and designed an online version of her adolescent and emerging adult development course, which is fully online in regard to course content and service learning activities; utilized her Writing Fellow stipend to bring all the lecturers in her department together to develop a universal, holistic writing rubric; and led her college’s London Study Abroad program and created a seminar comparing various aspects of human and family life in the United Kingdom compared to the United States.

Melissa Landers-Potts, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer of human development and family science at the University of Georgia, where she teaches courses in family development, lifespan development, adolescence, diversity, and the effect of technology on human development. She earned her doctoral degree in human development and family science and her master’s degree in sociology from the University of Georgia.

Incorporating Tools and Technology to Engage Students

The judging panel was impressed by how Bill Anderson, an associate professor in the College of Applied Science and Technology at Illinois State University, has mastered the use of tools and technology in his classroom to better engage students and provide them with new opportunities to apply the theories and information they learn in his courses.

Dr. Anderson has incorporated active learning software into his parenting classes, providing students with interactive educational experiences. The software empowers students to use the information they learn in class to describe their child, make theory-based predictions, and evaluate those predictions as the child ages.

In his graduate-level human development and social context course, Dr. Anderson uses a documentary series to provide students with an interrupted video case study experience. Students watch a portion of the documentary, then are challenged to interpret what they observed, make predictions about the case, and then reflect upon their predictions and theoretical applications as they watch new video clips, which spans 49 years of an individual’s life.

The impact of Dr. Anderson’s teaching is realized through the voices of his students, who sing his praises and often comment on how much they’ve learned in his courses.

Bill Anderson, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the College of Applied Science and Technology at Illinois State University. Over the course of his teaching career, he has taught courses in educational psychology, human development, music therapy techniques, and guitar. Dr. Anderson earned his doctoral degree in educational psychology from the University of Alabama and master’s degrees in human environmental sciences and music at the University of Alabama and Southern Theological Seminary, respectively.

Advancing the Scholarship of Family Science

The judging panel was impressed by the sheer volume and the outstanding quality of scholarship Raeann R. Hamon, Distinguished Professor of Family Science and Gerontology and the chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Science at Messiah College, has contributed to the discipline of Family Science. She has published five books since 2007 and has authored 36 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. In her works, Dr. Hamon consistently demonstrates the relevance and application of the discipline of Family Science. Due to her outstanding and continued publications and presentations, Dr. Hamon has been recognized by NCFR and serves as the Chair-Elect of the Advancing Family Science Section.

In addition to her contributions in advancing scholarship of the discipline, Dr. Hamon has implemented a variety of innovative teaching practices to her courses at Messiah College. She created The Elder Service Partner Program, an intergenerational service-learning program that pairs students with Elder Service Partners in the community. Students learn firsthand the value of intergenerational relationships, combat stereotypes related to older adults, and build a sensitivity and awareness to challenges facing aging populations.

In Dr. Hamon’s Dynamics of Family Interaction course, students are challenged to create a family genogram including three generations of family members and incorporating demographic, educational, occupational, medical, and social familial detail. Students then reflect on their findings, highlighting patterns and insights within their family system that are significant to their families’ functioning.

Raeann R. Hamon, Ph.D., CFLE, is a Distinguished Professor of Family Science and Gerontology and the chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Science at Messiah College, where she teaches courses in family interaction, the sociology of aging, family life education, opportunities in human development and family science, and interpersonal relationships. She earned her doctoral and master’s degrees in family studies from Virginia Tech.