Dr. Kuo: Building Healthy Families

Responsibilities include attending team meetings (Wednesdays at 3:30 PM for Fall Semester, Spring- TBD), commitment to learning observational coding and completing coding cases. Students are expected to master the training in the fall semester and independently complete cases in spring semester. The lab is also in the process of starting new online survey and interview projects with parents about their infant feeding practices in relation to parents’ mental health and wellbeing and infant’s physical health. Additional tasks may include recruitment of new participants into the study and transcription of recorded interviews.

All training is provided - and we are looking for students with a growth-oriented and flexible mindset, a solid sense of responsibility, and a genuine interest in family relationships research.

I support student learning, training, and development by creating scaffolded experiences for each student to meet their individual goals and by cultivating a supportive lab environment. I’ve been a FYRE mentor for two students, and both have been selected for competitive UCARE awards after the FYRE experience. One of the former FYRE/UCARE students even presented our findings at a professional conference and published a co-authored paper in a peer-reviewed journal.

For each student, I cultivate a sense of belonging in the research environment first by clearly articulating the importance of each student’s work in relation to the overall whole. I believe that when students know how their work contributes to the overall enterprise of the lab and later presentations and publications which may shape the field, students are able to gain an appreciation of the importance of their own work and belonging. Beyond understanding their work’s significance, I host informal gatherings (e.g., bowling and pizza night) and encourage connection-building conversations about life. Finally, I am accessible to the lab students through regular meetings and our electronic communication and task management interface, Basecamp.

Secondary contact: Jiabin Lyu, jlyu5@huskers.unl.edu