Biweekly during the academic year we share with you Family Matters: HDFS News
Briefs, a report of good things that are happening to UNCG’s Human Development
and Family Studies family and friends (e.g., faculty members, students, alumni and
interested parties. Please send us your GOOD NEWS!.
Family Matters:
HDFS News Briefs
January 30, 2014
Jon Tudge Twice: Major Grant and Brazil-US Course
HDFSAlumna Meeshay Williams-Wheeler is Fostering Healthy Eating
Jinni Su to Participate in Research on Adolescence Summer School
Natalie Hengstebeck’s Thesis Research to be Published
Student Updates: Alicia Cummins, Nicole Harrison-Obie, and Sandra Parker
Forthcoming Speakers
Jon Tudge Receives Major Grant from the Templeton Foundation
Jon Tudge has received major funding from the John Templeton Foundation to embark on a 3year, 4-culture study of the development of gratitude in 7- to 14-year-olds. He will collect
information from both children and their parents. Jon writes “Gratitude is a key aspect of
character formation; adolescents and adults who are grateful report high psychological wellbeing, tend to be more connected to community, and tend to be less materialistic. Excessive
materialism is neither environmentally sustainable nor psychologically healthy, but in societies
that encourage consumerism it is difficult to raise children to be non-materialistic. Developing
gratitude in children may help to counteract excessive materialism.” This project will be the first
to examine the development, in children and adolescents, of gratitude, materialism, and the
relations between them, and will show how both culture and parent individual differences are
related to children’s values. Besides publishing academic articles and a book, Jon’s goal is to
provide materials that can be used by parents and teachers to promote children’s and adolescents’
gratitude and, in the process, develop a more psychologically healthy and environmentally
sustainable view about the acquisition of material goods.
Jon Tudge Offers Bi-National Course
Jon speaks from Brazil, HDFS Faculty and Students Listen
Jonathan Tudge has just finished teaching a course connecting HDFS students and faculty with
doctoral students in Psychology at Brazil’s highly-rated Federal University of Rio Grande do
Sul,. He’s on research assignment there this year, and the course he taught there (called
International Research Seminar) was based on the HDFS Research Forum (aka the Fall
Colloquium Series). The Brazilian students read one or more studies written by each of the
Research Forum presenters, were able to participate in the Forum via teleconferencing, and
discussed both the studies and the presentation in their other class sessions. To vary things a
little, Jon gave one of the Research Forum presentations from Brazil, and was able to respond to
questions from HDFS faculty and students (see photo above of Jon speaking from Brazil). This is
part of Jon’s continuing efforts to make use of technology to bring students from multiple
cultures together for joint learning experiences.
HDFS Alumna Meeshay Williams-Wheeler is Fostering Healthy Eating
Meeshay Williams-Wheeler (HDFS BSc., 1992; PhD, 2006), now an Associate Professor of
Family and Consumer Sciences, is leading NC A & T efforts to promote healthy eating and
combat obesity. Via the Healthy Halifax Project, a community-based participatory research
undertaking, members of the First Baptist Church of Enfield are receiving assessments and
instructions on healthy food preparation and physical activity. Enfield is located in Halifax
County, the county that has the fifth highest obesity rate in North Carolina and also has one of
the state’s highest obesity-related disease rates. Even small steps can contribute to better
population health. Meeshay has also introduced a NC A& T course, Nutrition and Gardening for
Young Children. She notes that “Research shows that if they grow it, kids will eat it.” Meeshay’s
work was featured in the 2013 Volume 10 of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State
University’s publication Research (see pp. 4-8, http://www.ncat.edu/academics/schoolscolleges1/saes/agresearch/documents/ReSearch2013v10.pdf for a YouTube presentation by
Meeshay see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4ejL7FQSd8
Jinni Su to Participate in Research on Adolescence Summer School
Graduate Student Jinni Su is one of 26 very talented international students selected to participate
in a summer school to enhance the research skills of doctoral candidates doing dissertations
involving adolescents. With generous funding from the Johan Jacobs Foundation, the summer
school is sponsored jointly by the European Association for Research on Adolescence and the
(North American) Society for Research on Adolescence. This year’s summer school will be held
in June in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Congratulations to Jinni for being selected from many
applicants for this excellent opportunity.
Natalie Hengstebeck’s Thesis Research to be Published
Congratulations to Natalie Hengstebeck and her advisor Heather Helms on the acceptance of
Natalie’s masters thesis research being accepted for publication in the Journal of Family Issues.
In her thesis, Natalie examined the interplay between spouses’ gender role attitudes and
wives’employment status as a predictor of Mexican-origin husbands’ marital satisfaction. The
more strongly husbands endorsed sex-typed attitudes about marital roles, the lower their marital
satisfaction; wives’ being employed and the presence of additional adults in the home were also
linked with husbands having lower marital satisfaction. Considering the combined effects of the
factors in the study added complexity. For example for couples withnon-employed wives,
husbands’ marital satisfaction was lowest in marital contexts in which both spouses endorsed
more sex-typed gender role attitudes.
HDFS also compliments Natalie for being the co-creator of the International Association for
Relationship Research’s recently released web resource“Media for Teaching”
(http://www.iarr.org/media-for-teaching/).
Student Updates: Alicia Cummins, Nicole Harrison-Obie, and Simone Parker
Alicia Cummins will be a 2014 Teach For America Corps member.
Nicole Harrison-Obie has finished a masters degree in Psychology from the University of the
Rockies. She writes that her HDFS professors “left an impact on my learning in a positive way. I
will never forget you.”
Simone Parker, who graduated in December, will be working in a pre-k classroom and has been
admitted into the University of Southern California’s online elementary ed masters program.
Forthcoming Speakers
HDFS Speakers (Fridays, Stone 186)
February 7, Dr. Emily Cook
March 28, TBA
April 11, Dr. Laura Taylor
Gerontology Lunch and Learn Speakers (12:30, Thursdays, Edwards Lounge, Stone)
February 6, Sarah Laditka, Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences at UNC Charlotte,
“Health Risks that Double Disability for Older Americans with Diabetes: Results from a
National Longitudinal Study.”
March 20, Christine Davis, Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Associate
Professor of Gerontology at UNC Charlotte, “Compassionate Communication at End of Life:
Construction of an Interhuman Connection”