Human Development & Family Science News
Exploring community health, social policy
by Abigail Aaron
Child and Family Studies Major
During the Spring of my Junior Year I was fortunate enough to study in the amazingly beautiful yet unique country of South Africa, in the city of Durban located on the western coast of South Africa. The program that I was enrolled in was titled, Community Health and Social Policy, and so I took courses that discussed healthcare delivery in South Africa including the practice, prevention and promotion of healthcare, as well as the role that the media plays on influencing the wide range of health topics in South Africa.
My classes discussed topics such as social justice in rural communities, and healthcare practices that are specific to South Africa such as traditional healing. In addition to these classes, I took a beginning Zulu class where I learned to speak and read beginners Zulu so that I could converse with the locals as well as the four families that welcomed me into their homes during my homestays.
I had one homestay for five weeks in a township called Cato Manor located directly outside the city of Durban, and three rural homestays (2 days each) with families in the rural areas of South Africa in the countryside a few hours outside of Durban. During the last month of my program I completed a medical learnership in a rural hospital where I was able to shadow doctors and learn about the various health care issues specific to that community.
Majoring in social work, child and family studies, or other human services programs? Study Abroad Spring 2016 in Strasbourg
Falk College’s School of Social Work and SUAbroad are offering a new opportunity in Strasbourg, France for SU undergraduates and students at other colleges and universities. The 16-credit hour Strasbourg Spring 2016 Semester allows for enrollment in five courses and includes a brief optional internship opportunity abroad. In addition to bringing students face-to-face with human service delivery in other nations and enhancing cross-cultural understanding and competencies, program highlights include:
Strasbourg is a beautiful and charming city, smaller than Paris and very manageable. The program itinerary includes Paris, Amsterdam and Cologne during the semester. Students will visit major cities and historical sites, meeting government leaders, educators, and activists. Located in a city with several major European institutions and in the center of Western Europe, this program offers special learning opportunities for students in the city and regionally.
Strasbourg offers unique learning and internship opportunities because the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, and the European Court of Human Rights are located in close proximity to the SUAbroad campus. Students will benefit from on-going collaborative partnerships between the School of Social Work and French, German and Swiss institutions of higher education in social work and social pedagogy, a field of study in Europe focused on children and families.
Courses meet requirements in social work and child and family studies, address liberal arts and sciences requirements, and offer collaborative courses with the French social work and social pedagogy programs.
Please note: While applications for this program will be available later in the spring, students interested in this and other study abroad programs should work with their advisors during registration to manage their schedules to make a semester abroad possible.
An Agent of Change
by Ellie Prather ‘15
Child and Family Studies Major, Health and Wellness Minor
During Summer 2014, I was accepted into the Boston University Summer Study Internship Program in the Public Health and Social Policy Track. This unforgettable opportunity provided me with eight college credits and guided me to my internship placement at Medically Induced Trauma Support Services, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting patients, families and clinicians who have been involved in medical error. The experience exceeded my expectations as I was subjected to such a prominent yet undervalued issue, and was surrounded by inspirational people striving for a safer and more transparent healthcare system.
Having the opportunity to be a member of this team motivated me to be an agent of change. In addition to my incredible internship experience I have been lucky enough to be a research assistant for Project Ethics, a study taking place on campus about the inclusion of adults with intellectual disabilities in research. This has shown me how research unfolds and the amount of work that goes into producing results that could affect people’s lives for the better. As the president and founder of the student organization, Protect Our Breasts, I have had the opportunity to educate my community on breast cancer prevention while strengthening my leadership skills and truly understanding the importance and power of teamwork. This work in conjunction with my Child and Family Studies, and Health and Wellness coursework has showed me first-hand how the education I have been receiving plays out in the real world context. I am grateful for the major and minor that I chose because knowing how children and families function on community, national and global levels, and how health and wellness tie into that has not only been beneficial for me in a professional sense and towards my career outlook but for me personally as a growing individual.
Courses like Child and Families in the Healthcare Setting, and Sport and Human Development opened my eyes to potential careers. Prosocial and Moral Development was another important course for me because it taught me valuable lessons about human nature, inspired me to be a better person and looked at development from an incredibly unique perspective. I thank SU and Falk College for the endless resources and opportunities and look forward to taking the experiences and education with me to implement in my career. Syracuse has formed me into an incredibly motivated individual and I pride myself in how career driven I have become. After graduation, I plan to be working in the field of health improvement, whether that be large scale or community level work.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awards $25,000 grant to CFS doctoral student, Kimberly Davidson, and Dr. Jaipaul Roopnarine to study racial-ethnic socialization in children
Child and family studies doctoral student, Kimberly Davidson, working with Jaipaul Roopnarine, Ph.D., have received a $25,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Head Start Research Scholars. Their research project will explore how children learn about race and ethnicity and the roles that home environment, the neighborhood where they live and the child care programs they attend play in their racial and ethnic socialization. The study’s findings have the potential to influence Head Start policy development related to multicultural curriculum, teacher professional development, and parent involvement strategies as well as to increase parent-teacher communication at the community level.
As the U.S. population continues to diversify, early childhood programs strive to meet the needs of culturally diverse families. While parents and teachers are the primary providers of socialization that gives young children the tools they need to thrive in today’s diverse world, they do not often adequately address topics of race and ethnicity, which is detrimental to healthy child development.
Davidson’s and Roopnarine’s study seeks to examine the racial-ethnic socialization of preschool-age children in home and school environments by multiple caregivers. Using cultural-ecological models as a guide, the study looks at components within each socialization setting that include: parents/teachers, physical environments, and the racial-ethnic composition of neighborhoods/child care programs.
Utilizing a proposed sample of approximately 200 three- to five-year-old children and their families that participate in Head Start programs in Upstate New York, the researchers will examine the effects of similar and dissimilar home and school racial-ethnic socialization on children’s socioemotional and cognitive development. The racially and ethnically diverse population of Head Start families will allow the researchers to define typologies of socialization between groups and will speak to the variation of child care needs by cultural orientation.
The Early Care and Education Research Scholars: Head Start Graduate Student Research Grant supports Davidson’s doctoral dissertation project entitled, “Divergence or Convergence of Home and School Racial-Ethnic Socialization: Effects on Preschool Children’s Racial Attitudes, Socioemotional and Cognitive Development.” It is one of only six grants awarded nationally in a highly competitive process. Davidson presented her project at the Annual Meeting of the Child Care Policy Research Consortium in early November in Washington, DC.
Davidson was honored in 2013 with the Alice Sterling Honig Award for graduate studies excellence in the Department of Child and Family Studies. A member of the Kappa Omicron Nu honor society, she has published several peer-reviewed journal articles, including “Parenting practices in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago: Connections to preschoolers’ social and cognitive skills,” in the Interamerican Journal of Psychology. Along with Roopnarine, she currently has book chapters in press: “Cultural variations in young children’s play: A selective overview,” in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Contemporary Early Childhood Education and “Parent-child play across cultures: Theoretical considerations and suggestions for advancing play research,” in the Handbook of the Study of Play.
Davidson’s master thesis at the University of Tennessee examined the conceptualizations of race and ethnicity in a preschool classroom. Since arriving to Syracuse University, Davidson has worked closely with Dr. Roopnarine in developing seminars for local childhood educators. She also serves as editorial assistant for the journal, Fathering, which is edited by Dr. Roopnarine. Davidson has served as a teaching assistant for several classes in the Department of Child and Family Studies, including Child and Family in Cross-Cultural Perspectives, and the Development of Children and Youth. She is currently independently teaching the CFS course, Family and Child Intervention. She is vice president of the Student Council on Family Relations and is a member of the Society for Research on Child Development, Society for Cross-Cultural Research and the National Association of Multicultural Education.
Dr. Ramadoss presents on work-family interface in India
With a research focus that includes the workplace and how it affects employees and their families, assistant professor of child and family studies, Kamala Ramadoss, Ph.D., will be a featured presented during the South Asia Center’s Spring Speaker Series. On February 10, she will present, “Work-family Interface in India.” The presentation will take place at 340 Eggers Hall, 12:30 p.m. and is open to the campus community.
The economic boom resulting from the liberalization of the Indian economy has increased employment opportunities, particularly for women who have entered the paid work force in large numbers leading to increasing numbers of dual-earner families. This results in both positive and negative spillover effects from work-to-family and family-to-work, with implications for individual health and well being, marital commitment and life satisfaction. The Frone model of work-family conflict works somewhat differently in India; an understanding of the antecedents and consequences of the work-family interface can help design interventions and workplace policies that will promote better quality of life. Ramadoss’ presentation will explore these topics, with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end of the session.
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services awards Elif Dede Yildirim, Jaipaul Roopnarine $100,000 grant to investigate relationships between child development outcomes and paternal engagement
Child and family studies Ph.D. student, Elif Dede Yildirim, working with Jaipaul Roopnarine, Ph.D., has received a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families. The research project, “Paternal Factors and Childhood Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Relationship Quality and Support Networks,” offers great promise for state and local agencies that focus on preventing developmental risks to children that are attributed to challenging home and neighborhood environments.
Several initiatives at the federal, state, and local levels have identified fathers as important figures in combating poverty, reducing the lost developmental potential of young children, improving childhood nutrition, and reducing experiences with violence during the early childhood years. Researchers from diverse disciplines have identified risks and protective factors within and external to the family that are associated with different dimensions of father engagement and child development outcomes.
Despite these advances, little is known about the links between interventions for fathers and childhood outcomes, and what factors within the family mediate these links in families who participate and do not participate in relationship education. This research project, which will span the coming year, will study the associations between fathers’ responsiveness, depressive symptoms, and experiences of interpartner violence, young children’s social and language skills, and whether social support networks and relationship quality mediate these associations differently.
“This award will permit us to examine the impact of early intervention to strengthen paternal involvement with children in a national representative sample of low-income fathers. Our findings should assist in designing more effective intervention programs for fathers,” says Roopnarine.
Dede Yildirim, who expects to complete her Ph.D. in 2016, will use the data for her dissertation, which is entitled, “The Association between Family Economic Well Being and Children’s Socio-Emotional Outcomes via Paternal Parenting and Stress: A Bayesian Approach.” The recipient of the Child and Family Studies’ Master Award for Research Excellence in 2013, Yildirim has several publications in press working with Roopnarine, including “The Mediating Role of Maternal Warmth in the Relationship Between Harsh Parental Practices and Externalizing Behaviors in Hispanic American, African American and European American Families,” in Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, and “Family Structure and Socialization Patterns in Caribbean and Caribbean Immigrant Families: Developmental Outcomes,” in the book, “Childhood and adolescence in cross-cultural perspective,” (U. Gielen & J.L. Roopnarine, Eds., New York, NY: Praeger).
Dede Yildirim is a graduate assistant in the Department of Child and Family Studies where she is a teaching assistant for the HSH 101—Freshman Gateway seminar. She is additionally working on projects that include a cross cultural comparison of predictors and outcomes of physical punishment and predictors, and outcomes of physical punishment among college students in Turkey. A research assistant for nutrition professor, Tanya Horacek, on the Healthy Campus Environmental Audit. Dede Yildirim is a participant in the Future Professoriate Program at Syracuse University and a member of the Student Council on Family Relations at Syracuse University.
Syracuse University’s Falk College Highlights Graduate Studies During November 15 Information Session
Faculty, staff, students available to talk about programs, coursework, student life
Syracuse University faculty, staff and current students will welcome potential graduate students interested in the Falk College’s graduate programs in child and family studies, public health, marriage and family therapy, nutrition science, social work andsport management during a special Fall Information Session for graduate studies on Saturday, November 15. The presentation begins at 10:00 a.m. in the Shaffer Art Building, Shemin Auditorium.
Detailed information will be provided on graduate programs in child and family studies (MA, MS, Ph.D.), child and family health (MS), marriage and family therapy (MA), social work (MSW) as well as the dual degree program (MA/MSW) in marriage and family therapy and social work, nutrition science, and sport venue and event management (MS). Details on our newCertificate of Advanced Study (CAS) programs in trauma-informed practice and intercollegiate athletic advising and supportwill be available along with information on other Falk College CAS programs in addiction studies, dietetic internship, and global health.
Admissions staff will be available at the information session to meet with students and provide information on academic programs, scholarships and housing.
New this Spring: CFS 423 – Death, Dying & Loss – Child and Family Perspectives
This course will help students understand pediatric death, dying and loss through exploring the psychosocial, sociocultural and ethical aspects of loss and through examining concepts of loss, grief and bereavement. Theories of child and adolescent development will provide students with a comprehensive framework of children’s understanding of illness and end of life care. Students will be given the opportunity to examine their own beliefs about death through the analysis of their own life experiences.
CFS students explore the benefits of sport for human development with UNICEF president Caryl Stern
For students in the Department of Child and Family Studies’ course, Sport and Human Development, a recent interactive class discussion focused on the power of sport in UNICEF’s day-to-day work with children and communities around the world. Dr. Terry MacDonald created and teaches the course, which examines the role sports play in positive and healthy youth development. During the Fall semester, she invited Caryl M. Stern, president and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, and Matt Meyerson, UNICEF senior director for sport partnerships, to meet with her students. During the class, Stern focused on her interests in this area and the ways in which UNICEF uses sport as a context to provide humanitarian aid and services to those in need. She showed videos of sport ambassadors who collaborate with UNICEF programs in developing countries to bring attention to issues of poverty, public health (such as clean water, immunizations), education, and disaster relief. Throughout the semester, class assignments and projects will continue to explore topics such as parental and peer influences on children’s psychosocial development through sport, the development of life skills and values in high school sports, and sport as a vehicle for social change, among many others.
Dr. Alice Sterling Honig Endowed Scholarship Announced
In honor of her dedication and service to Syracuse University and its students for more than 40 years as an educator, researcher, scholar, mentor and friend, the Falk College announced the establishment of the Dr. Alice Sterling Honig Endowed Scholarship Fund to benefit students majoring in child and family studies at Syracuse University. The endowed scholarship was created in her honor through a generous gift by long-time colleague and retired Syracuse University faculty member, Dr. Bettye Caldwell.
In the 1960s, Caldwell’s work in the area of comprehensive early childhood development programming primarily serving low-income preschool-age children and their families at the Children’s Center of Syracuse provided the foundation for what became one of the most important components of the Great Society programs launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson known today as Head Start.
Honig and Caldwell met at Syracuse University in the Department of Child and Family Studies in 1963 when Caldwell hired Honig as a research assistant for the grant, “Infant Learning and Patterns of Family Care.” The two remained colleagues, collaborators and friends since that time.
“In those 51 years since Alice got her first job in Syracuse, she has become one of the most productive and most respected people in the field of early child development. She has published hundreds of articles and books. Within the University, she has supervised the work of many students,” says Caldwell.
In addition to her role as a faculty member in the Department of Child and Family Studies at Syracuse University more than 50 years ago, Caldwell worked closely with Dr. Julius Richmond, then-chairman of pediatrics at Upstate University Hospital with whom she worked on the infant learning grant, along with Honig. In 1967, she formed the Children’s Center with Richmond, who eventually became surgeon general and went on to serve as national director of Head Start for President Lyndon Johnson. The work she and Richmond did in Syracuse as cofounders of that childhood learning initiative provided the foundation for the national Head Start program.
A licensed psychologist and a fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the Society for Research in Child Development, Honig has done extensive research on infants and toddlers, language development, child-care practices, preschooler social development, fathering and the effects of divorce on children. Honig presents training sessions and delivers keynote addresses to promote high quality childcare all over the United States and in several other countries, including South Korea, Singapore, France, China, and Australia. For over a decade, Dr. Honig (with a lawyer as co-leader) conducted workshops for The Onondaga County Mental Health Association for parents with divorce and child custody issues.
Honig has authored or edited more than a dozen books and more than 600 articles and chapters. In October 2014, her latest book, “The Best for Babies” (Gryphon House) was released. She is currently editing a new book she has given as a gift to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) entitled, “Experiencing Nature with Young Children: Awakening Delight, Curiosity and a Sense of Stewardship.”
She contributed regularly as a columnist for “Scholastic Parent and Child” and “Scholastic Early Education today” as well as for the Scholastic Website for parents. Dr. Honig for over 20 years has been the North American Editor for the British journal “Early Child Development and Care”. and on the Board of the National Head Start NHSA Dialog Journal. She has been on the editorial board of “Child Development,” the official journal of the Society for Research in Child Development. She is also a member of the Editorial board of”PsycCRITIQUES”.
“I know of no one more deserving than Dr. Alice Honig to have an endowed scholarship named for her, and I am very happy to see that this is happening,” concludes Caldwell
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