Joyce Baptist, Ph.D., associate professor
Last spring I began my responsibilities as editor-in-chief for the Journal of Feminist Family Therapy. We are transitioning the journal onto an electronic submission and review platform. I am well into the study on Resilience in National Guard families and began the second round of data collection at two summer camps funded by the Department of Defense.
My study on emerging adults in Malaysia is in its second phase examining relationship maintenance and relational violence. While in Malaysia working on research in May, I provided clinical consultation to two counseling centers. The increasing number of couples seeking relational therapy in Malaysia is promising – it may be the beginning of a trend towards reduced stigma of mental health services.
I continue to publish and present at national conferences with my students, facilitate the supervision refresher course at KAMFT and advise the Malaysian Student Association at K-State. More recently, I was invited to serve on the advisory board for CASA and the scientific advisory committee for a Kansas Youth Suicide Prevention Project.
It was a delight to end the year by hooding C.J. Aducci at last May. He has done us proud with his research on the Chickasaw community in Oklahoma.
Finally, my biggest joy this year has been to watch my daughter Elena blossom into toddler!
Jared Anderson, Ph.D., associate professor
Stacy and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary recently by crossing a trip off our bucket list—hiking the Inca Trail to see Machu Picchu. The kids are all growing like weeds.
I continue to team with Sandi (Stith) on interesting and challenging projects funded by the Air Force, working closely with men and women who have sacrificed much to serve our country. My research teams and I are heavily involved in several other projects: 1) We completed data collection for our couples and diabetes pilot project, a partnership with the KU Diabetes institute, and we currently have a number of manuscripts at various stages of the publication process. 2) We continue to mine our China data and develop manuscripts out of several secondary data sets. 3) We wrapped up our Family Well-Being Indicators project for DCF and presented our results to the governor’s task force on child poverty in November. I was excited to teach a new elective this fall, Marriage and Relationship Education, which will result in a new research project in the spring.
Nancy O’Conner, M.S., clinic director
I have been fortunate to travel again last year, going with two MFT students and others to South Africa for a study abroad with the conflict resolution program. What a life changing experience!
This year I have been collaborating with the Northern Regional College in Northern Ireland about the consulting in their counseling program. I received a faculty development award to attend a conference in Boston on Elder Mediation.
The Family Center is doing well and now has an updated video recording system. As we work out the bugs I am confident it will be a welcome upgrade. I continue to be involved with the home-based training partnership contract and Smart Start projects. These are in their 6th and 7th years respectively and are continuing to evolve.
Amber Vennum, Ph.D., assistant professor
My husband and I welcomed our first child into the world in November (Xavier William Vennum). I also had the privilege of graduating my first academic children (Kale Monk and Rachel Lindstrom) and am very proud of their accomplishments. On the teaching front, a group of current PhD students joined me in the trial run of our advanced statistics course and we emerged with new abilities and exciting research questions to pursue.
I have also had the opportunity to collaborate with students on multiple research projects: exploring decision making, dedication, and instability in young adult romantic relationships in China and the US; distilling how relationship education helps young adults make healthy relationship decisions; and further developing theory and research on MFTs in schools. As I look back on the past two years, I still cannot believe how blessed I am to be in such a wonderful program and look forward to my third year!
Jared Durtschi, Ph.D., assistant professor
I am grateful to have been a Wildcat and teaching at K-State for two years. My wife and I go biking together on our local mountain biking trails. Tyler, 7, loves baseball and school; Brady, 5, is really into biking and his toys; and Ellie, 3, enjoys wrestling with her brothers and dressing up like a princess.
This past year I taught a statistics course on structural equation modeling, and a theory course that focused on emotionally focused couples therapy and narrative therapy. I also engaged in clinical supervision throughout the year. It has been a pleasure to work with motivated and hardworking student-therapists who push themselves towards excellence in their coursework and clinical work. In my statistics class, the students used structural equation modeling to test research questions on topics interesting to them. From these completed papers, many of the students have now presented their research at national conferences, some have been submitted for publication already, and some are already accepted for publication.
Collaborating on research with our graduate students has allowed me to be much more productive than I ever could have done on my own. This year I was able to present at national conferences, publish articles, and receive research funding with our graduate students. I am currently researching the following topics: couples’ romantic relationship quality and stability during emerging adulthood, the transition to parenthood, and early marriage; examining family processes and parenting behaviors associated with better child outcome; and the link between therapists’ self-care behaviors and professional quality of life. I often use large, national, dyadic, and longitudinal data sets to answer these research questions. I am also gathering longitudinal, dyadic data from first-time parents in the military.
This past year I taught seminars on advanced statistics in Washington DC to AAMFT Minority Fellows. I also taught a two-day seminar on dyadic data modeling to another accredited MFT program. It is exciting to see the advancement of the quality of research our field is producing, that can come from learning improved methods to actually test what we are most interested in.
Camille LaFleur, Ph.D., research associate
I joined the HBFT Partnership project this year to serve as the 6-Principle Investigator and Co-Administrator of the K-State contract with KDADS. I envision expanding the HBFT Partnership project to significantly enhance its partnership with home-based family therapists through the development of additional connections beyond the initial Core Training. This will offer a vital connection to engage in projects that resource and support these therapists which, as informed by previous research, suggests that these efforts will enhance their professional quality of life. The self-care app project is one such project in the early phases of development.
Before joining the MFT program I was team leader in the psychosocial department at Family Service and Guidance Center in Topeka and also maintained a limited clinical caseload. My work with Severely Emotionally Disturbed (SED) children and adolescents provides a foundation for understanding the challenges these families face as well as those of the clinicians who work with them.
My educational background includes a B.A. in child care and development from the University of Kansas, an M.S. in marriage and family therapy from Oklahoma Baptist University, and a Ph.D. in human ecology with an emphasis in marriage and family therapy from K-State.
