Annual Newsletter - College of Human Ecology - Kansas State ...

Spotlight on faculty
Sandra Stith
Program Director and
Professor
This has been another great
year for me. I love being
at Kansas State University and cheering on
the Wildcats at football games. I also love
being close to my son, a Ph.D. student at the
University of Colorado, and his wife and two
children; and my daughter and her husband
and their four children in Tulsa. We all got
together for a week in Colorado in June.
Professionally, I presented papers at the
International Family Therapy Conference
in Vancouver, B.C., and the International
Psychology Conference in Cape Town, South
Africa. I co-presented with students at the
American Association for Marriage and
Family Therapy conference and the National
Council on Family Relations Conference
and the International Domestic Violence
Conference sponsored by the University of
New Hampshire.
I continue to manage two large funded
military projects, one focusing on developing
a risk assessment instrument to be used to
assess domestic violence in the military, and
the second involving managing a variety of
U.S. Air Force projects including conducting
a meta-analytic review of risk factors for
domestic violence and a quality assurance
project for secondary prevention of family
maltreatment. My research passion is in the
area of treatment of couples experiencing
domestic violence. My research teams focus
on risk factors for domestic violence, dating
violence, couples treatment for domestic
violence and situational couple violence.
Amber Vennum
Assistant Professor
I can’t believe a year has gone
by! My husband and I (and
our two dogs) have settled in
nicely and are working on personalizing our
new house. We are also working on creating
a nursery for a baby boy we are expecting in
December — if everything goes according to
plan! We have been amazed at how quickly
our new city has come to feel like home.
Professionally, I had a great time developing
and teaching Clinical Theory and Practice
this past year for our master’s students and
am looking forward to teaching our Ph.D.
students advanced statistics this spring. On
the research front, several projects are up
and running. With the help of some great
student researchers, we have presented at
the International Association of Relationship
Research conference and have several papers
that are submitted for publication regarding
the impact of cyclical (on-again/off-again)
premarital relationships on later adult
cohabiting and marital relationships.
I also joined Jared Anderson and a group of
students in May on a trip to China to further
nurture our collaborations and research
projects there. I am looking forward to
expanding my research on young adult
romantic relationships to urban China.
Additionally, I was fortunate enough to
receive two grants this past spring to study
the impact of MFTs working in public schools
on family and academic functioning. We will
be developing and implementing this project
in collaboration with Manhattan High School
and an urban school district in Houston this
school year. I will also be presenting on MFTs
in schools at the annual AAMFT Conference
in Charlotte, N.C. I look forward to another
exciting year here at Kansas State!
Joyce Baptist
Associate Professor
This past year has been a
great one, having attained
tenure and promotion to
associate professor. Other achievements
include five publications in refereed journals,
three presentations at national conferences,
two grants for research on resilience in military
children, and a grant to develop an online
psychopathology class. Together with my
research team comprising faculty, graduate
and undergraduate students, we began our
work on resilience in military children
this summer.
I was pleased to teach an introduction
course on Eye Movement Desensitization
and Reprocessing to our MFT students who
are seeing an increasing number of trauma
cases. For the third year, Teri Nelson and I cofacilitated
the Supervisor Refresher Workshop
at the KAMFT. My international work this year
expanded to include training therapists at the
EMMAUS Counseling Center in Malaysia to
do couples therapy and developing a study
abroad program on the sociocultural diversity
across families in Malaysia.
New developments for this year include
serving as chair of the College of Human
Ecology’s Faculty Council, developing a
certificate in MFT through the Great Plains
Interactive Distance Education Alliance,
and welcoming the arrival of Elena Elizabeth
Baptist-Thompson on Oct 13 who weighed in
at 8lbs 3 oz.
Jared Durtschi
Assistant Professor
This first year living in
Manhattan and being a part
of Kansas State University has
been wonderful for me and my family. I have
begun to proudly wear K-State purple! We are
settling into our new home, neighborhood
and the Manhattan lifestyle. My three young
kids are staying busy in first grade, preschool,
and otherwise busy in soccer, T-ball and
gymnastics. My wife, Angela, is enjoying
teaching cake decorating classes, and I’ve
been riding the local mountain bike trails
when things aren’t too busy.
This past year I had the opportunity to teach
a statistics course to the doctoral students
in the MFT program. I taught them how to
use structural equation modeling with large
national data sets to answer their research
questions. I was very impressed with our
students’ ability to quickly grasp complex
6