Human Development and Family Studies Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice

Melissa Fenton’s research aims to reduce behavioral health disparities in historically underserved adolescents and young adults. Her main research focus is on preventing behavioral health problems among rural adolescents and young adults. Additionally, she studies the behavioral health and well-being of LGBTQ+ adolescents and young adults. She led a recent study examining the associations between regional levels of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation introduced in state legislatures across the U.S. and depressive symptoms among LGBTQ+ college students in a nationally representative sample.

Program director of our Marriage and Family Therapy Graduate Program Toni Zimmerman supports and leads the program’s mission to train students to provide ethical, multiculturally-informed, evidence-based, and systemically oriented therapeutic services for a diverse population of individuals, couples, and families within a variety of professional settings. Students provide mental health services to mentees in the Campus Connections program, which helps youth in the community experiencing adversity.

Ana Gutierrez-Colina’s research aims to improve the health and well-being of youth and families from historically underserved and marginalized backgrounds. Her interests are at the intersection of socioemotional, cognitive, and contextual factors that underlie health behavior and health behavior change. She studies how health barriers such as depressive symptoms function as mechanisms and potential intervention targets for core health behaviors (sleep, physical activity, eating) with a focus on Hispanic youth and families living in rural areas.

Led by investigators Deborah Fidler and Lisa Daunhauer, the Developmental Disabilities Laboratory uses developmental science to understand how individuals with differing abilities learn and grow. The lab researches how areas of strength and vulnerability emerge during the earliest years of development, and how to identify children who are at risk for additional difficulties and diagnoses. They use the information they generate to create new approaches and innovations for families, caregivers, service providers, and educators.

This course covers why some individuals are at high risk for poor developmental outcomes, and why certain individuals fare well despite such risks or adversities. Strong developmental emphasis because resilience is viewed as a process, the results of which may not be manifest for years. There is an ecological emphasis because protective and vulnerability factors often reside in families, schools, neighborhoods.

This course covers the intersection of individuals, children, families and the legal system, including the balance between the right to privacy and government intervention, and social disparities in the legal system. Topics include: establishing the legal parent relationship, adoption, the rights of children and parents, marriage, divorce, dependency and neglect, family violence, disability and estate planning, juvenile delinquency, legalities of gender, and landlord/tenant and housing policy.

This course works directly with the HDFS peer mentoring program, which is one-to-one peer mentoring with first-year, underrepresented HDFS students to support their successful transition to the university and department.

This course covers recommended practices for fostering development of young children with disabilities, knowledge of atypical development in early childhood (birth through grade 3); practices for assessment, intervention, adapted instruction and materials; and inclusive environments to facilitate children’s attainment of educational goals.