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

— Jennifer Vitas, Megan Stout and Elisabeth
Ruby. It was a pleasure to work with each
of you! I look forward to seeing alumni and
friends this fall at AAMFT and next spring at
KAMFT. Have a great year!
Nancy O’Conner
Clinic Director
2011 Doctoral Cohort
topics, run their own models and write solid
empirical papers. They did a really nice job.
Many of their papers have been accepted to
be presented at national conferences and will
soon be ready to submit for publication.
I also had the opportunity to do quite a bit of
clinical supervision this past year. I have been
very impressed with caliber of clinicians in
our master’s and Ph.D. programs. It has been
wonderful to collaborate on research with
a number of motivated and hardworking
graduate students since arriving at Kansas
State University. We have submitted invited
book chapters and articles for publication
this first year.
I look forward to all we can do this next
year as well. I have been awarded two small
research grants to begin a study in early fall.
We will gather longitudinal, dyadic data from
military couples during pregnancy and then
at three follow-up points across the first year
of parenthood. We aim to collect extensive
data from both partners of about 150 couples.
Additionally, I am continuing to use large
national data sets to study couple process
and stability across time.
Jared Anderson
Assistant Professor
This fall I began my sixth year
at Kansas State University and
this marks the longest time
that Stacy and I have ever lived in one place
since we’ve been married. We love Manhattan,
Kansas State University and the MFT program,
so we plan on being here for many years to
come. Kate, 7, is excited to get back to school
and begin first grade, while the boys —
Logan, 4, and Cale, 3, will soon start preschool
again. We’re looking forward to cooler fall
temperatures and football!
This has been a jam-packed year full of fun
projects. I continue to team with Sandi Stith
on several exciting projects funded by the Air
Force, and this year I’m also funded through
the Kansas Department of Children and
Families to identify indicators of family wellbeing
to track both at the county level and
statewide. Other research endeavors include
a joint project with the University of Kansas
Diabetes Institute to better understand the
relationship between marital functioning,
diabetes management and metabolic control;
continued data collection on my newlywed
Army couples study; and in May we returned
from China with data on 200 young adult
dating couples.
In August I returned to China to speak at
and participate in the first Sino-American
conference on family therapy in Beijing.
Clinically, I’m working with two doctoral
students to develop a project at the K-State
Family Center, focused on working with
couples who are on the brink of divorce
and are ambiguous about the future of
their relationship.
Finally, several of my students graduated this
year, including newly minted PhD’s Jonathan
Swinton, Matt Johnson and Jeremy Boyle,
and three who obtained their master’s degree
7
So another year has gone
by. It hardly seems real that
I am marking my 23 rd year
at K-State. There are so many wonderful
experiences that keep my work fresh and
exciting. I continue to manage a contract
with the State of Kansas training homebased
family therapists. This past year the
new project in this contract was developing
an application for smart phones to monitor
self-care. It is in the production phase now and
should be ready for use this year. I am teaching
a play therapy course for master’s students,
which is tremendously fun, and I continue to
have the opportunity to supervise students’
clinical work. Quite some time ago I also
became a member of the Conflict Resolution
unit and teach the Family Mediation class.
Two years ago I was able to go to Northern
Ireland with students to study the peace and
conflict process. This past March several of us
traveled to South Africa to develop a similar
study abroad program studying the peace and
conflict process in this country. We will return
with students in May 2013 and I am looking
forward to that experience.
Personally, my husband I celebrated our 28 th
year of marriage and are still looking forward
to our honeymoon in Rome! We have a
daughter with her seven children living nearby
and a son living in Florida with his wife and
young son. I continue to feel blessed to be
part of a great family and to work with such
great colleagues and students at Kansas
State University.
For more information visit
he.k-state.edu