When she was an undergraduate at University of Texas at Austin, Cathy Schlund-Vials used to listen to 200 people complain about their pizza every night in her customer service job for a local pizza chain. It might not sound like a typical inspiration to pursue academia, but “it taught me something about the human condition and got me thinking about graduate school,” says Schlund-Vials now a professor and associate dean at UConn. Even then, while pursuing graduate studies in Victorian literature at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Schlund-Vials wasn’t quite sure about this new path. Schlund-Vials thought she might stay forever at the Northampton, Massachusetts nightclub where she was a barback, bouncer, and bartender. But then a professor changed her life, opening her eyes to literature where she says women of color like her were represented. Now, Schlund-Vials works to impact the lives of her students as a professor of English and Asian/Asian American studies and associate dean for humanities and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Through her research into such topics as trauma, human rights, and immigrant/refugee narratives, Schlund-Vials says she pays homage to her heritage as the adopted daughter of a Japanese mother who …

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A large proportion of sexual and gender minority youth do not identify with traditional sexual identity labels – such as gay, lesbian, and bisexual – but instead describe previously little understood sexual identities using emerging sexual identity labels such as pansexual, non-binary, or asexual, according to a new University of Connecticut study. The findings, published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence, are based on a national survey on the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) teenagers. Ryan J. Watson, assistant professor of human development and family studies, led the study with co-authors Rebecca M. Puhl of UConn’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity and Christopher W. Wheldon of the National Cancer Institute. The study uses data from the LGBTQ National Teen Study that Watson and Puhl developed in collaboration with the Human Rights Campaign. The survey of 17,112 teens (4,720 M/12,373 F) was conducted online across a range of race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic statuses, and found that 26 percent chose emerging sexual identity labels. Additional research on this study data. Watson discussed the study with UConn Today. Q. Your major finding is that a large proportion of minority youth do not identify with traditional sexual identity labels, but instead describe their identity with …

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On a bitterly cold and gray February morning, more than 60 people came to the Student Union for a community conversation with one of Connecticut’s U.S. Senators, sparked by two undergraduate students and the grant-supported work they are doing to quantify and address food insecurity among students at UConn. Food insecurity – or lack of regular access to sufficient affordable, nutritious food – is a nationwide problem, that has a particular impact on the college-age population. Students Wanjiku (Wawa) Gatheru ’20 (CAHNR) and Abhishek Gupta ’20 (CLAS) took this to heart in co-founding the UConn Access to Food Effort, or UCAFE, a new organization seeking to address food insecurity and student hunger on campus. Their initiative is backed by a $4,000 UConn IDEA grant through the Office of Undergraduate Research – an innovative grant program that supports student-designed and led projects, providing an opportunity for undergraduate creativity, artistic exploration, original research, and service-oriented projects. “My understanding of food insecurity is lack of access to fresh, healthy, nutritious food, culturally competent food,” said Gatheru, who is continuing the project while Gupta studies abroad this semester, and who led Monday’s roundtable. U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy ’02 JD, who helped organize the event, said that nationally as …

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Adolescents who identify as LGBTQ often face victimization and bullying because of their sexual and gender identity. New University of Connecticut research indicates that high percentages are also teased and bullied because of their body weight – in some cases at higher rates than previous reports of weight-based bullying in heterosexual youth. The study, published in Pediatric Obesity, reports on findings from 9,838 adolescents who participated in the 2017 LGBTQ National Teen Survey, a comprehensive survey conducted in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign to assess victimization, health behaviors, family relationships, and experiences of LGBTQ adolescents across the United States. Researchers found that across sexual identities, 44 to 70 percent of LGBTQ teens reported weight-based teasing from family members; 41 to 57 percent reported weight-based teasing from peers; and as many as 44 percent reported weight-based teasing from both family members and peers. Furthermore, approximately 1 in 4 teens reported these experiences at school, and body weight was the third most common reason that these adolescents reported being teased or treated badly, following sexual orientation and gender identity. “Body weight is often absent in school-based anti-bullying policies, and our findings suggest that heightened awareness of this issue may be warranted in school settings to ensure …

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University of Connecticut assistant professor of molecular and cell biology, Leighton Core hopes to answer new questions about RNA through a $2 million grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Our bodies respond, on a cellular level, to environmental changes through a complicated process – turning on or off parts of our vast genome, expressing specific genes at specific levels to respond to specific situations. However, experts are learning that this process may be even more complex than previously thought. When our bodies need to produce proteins, necessary codes are found in our DNA. The process of transcription creates a messenger RNA that is an RNA copy of the DNA sequence. During translation, transport RNA then brings over the amino acids that correspond to the RNA code. These amino acids are joined together to create the protein. These proteins are responsible for everything that happens in our bodies from development, to immune responses and healing. But there are some segments of our DNA that make RNAs that don’t code for any protein – so why do we have them? This is the question Core hopes to answer. Even though it is not translated into protein itself, noncoding RNA plays a critical role in regulating transcription …

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Ruth Braunstein is an assistant professor of sociology whose research explores the practices, narratives, and ideals of activists across the political spectrum. Her first book, Prophets and Patriots: Faith in Democracy Across the Political Divide, a comparative ethnographic study of progressive faith-based community organizing and Tea Party activism, was published by the University of California Press in 2017. Her recent article “Boundary-work and the demarcation of civil from uncivil protest in the United States: control, legitimacy, and political inequality” was published in the journal Theory and Society. The research was supported by the UConn Humanities Institute’s Humility and Conviction in Public Life Project. She discussed the issues surrounding civil and uncivil behavior in political protests with UConn Today. Q. What was the impetus to focus on what you call civility contests? A. During my previous research project, where I was doing field work with grassroots activists on both the right and the left, I was participating in both a local Tea Party group during the height of their activity and also a local faith-based community organizing coalition, much more progressive and social justice-oriented. At the time, the Tea Party’s actions at the health care town hall meetings got a lot of press coverage, talking about the fact …

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Letitia Naigles, a University of Connecticut professor of psychological sciences, has received $1.6 million from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders to investigate variation of language usage among school age children with autism spectrum disorder. The Center for Disease Control estimates 1 in 59 children in the U.S. have autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which translates to roughly 1.3 million children. One of the hallmarks of ASD is problems communicating, both using and understanding language. However, language use among children with ASD is incredibly diverse, ranging from age-appropriate language use to being completely non-verbal. Naigles has been studying three groups of children with ASD since they were diagnosed as toddlers to follow their linguistic development over time. These children are now between 8 and 17 years old. This new project will allow her to continue to look at this group and hopefully gain further insights into what accounts for the diversity of language usage among children with ASD. “These children are now in middle childhood to adolescence, allowing us to study language use appropriate to this age, its relationship to ‘individual’ early child and parent language measures from the UConn Longitudinal Study of Early Language,” Naigles says. “We are also adding ‘interactive’ measures drawn from …

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Professor of Human Development and Family Studies Michael Ego passed away on Jan. 28, 2019. Ego was the former Director of the UConn Stamford Campus and was known for his work on sports reminiscence as a therapy for patients with dementia. Ego received his bachelor’s degree from California State University Dominguez Hills in Physical Education in 1974, his master’s degree from California State University, Los Angeles in Recreation Administration in 1976, and his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in Leisure Studies and Services in 1980. Ego held a number of different positions before coming to UConn, including time on the faculty at California State University, Northridge, and his roles as Professor and Dean of the College of Applied Sciences and Arts at San Jose State University. He joined University of Connecticut in 2005 as Professor of Human Development and Family Studies in Stamford, as well as serving as the Associate Vice Provost for the Stamford campus from 2005-2010. Recently, Ego focused his research on sports reminiscence therapy for individuals with dementia. Department Head of Human Development and Family Studies Eva Lefkowitz says that Ego had a true passion for this research, not only for the pursuit of new knowledge, but also for the …

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Robert Thorson, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, is one of two geologists elected to the American Antiquarian Society this millennium.  Thorson was chosen for his work on Anthropocene stone walls, public education, and geo-journalism, and joins only eight other geologists elected since the end of the 19th century. Membership in the Society, which is at present 1039, is by election and is limited to 1250. The society, located in Worcester, Massachusetts, doubles as a learned society and library which collects, preserves and houses an extensive archive of "what is now the United States from 1640-1876". Founded in 1812, the society is recognized as the third oldest historical organization in the United States and the first to curate a collection that is national in scope.  Thorson joins fourteen U.S. presidents who have been AAS members as well, in addition to notable historical actors such as as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Alexander Graham Bell, and more contemporary members such as Ken Burns, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Walter Cronkite and Henry Louis Gates.

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In March 1849, a slave in his mid-thirties paid $86 of his saved tobaccist money to ship a 3-feet by 2-feet crate from his master’s home in Richmond, Va. to Philadelphia. The box was lined with coarse woolen cloth, contained a small hole on one side, and traveled by wagon, railroad, and steamboat. Twenty-seven hours later, when abolitionist Passmore Williamson and the rest of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee received the box at Williams’s office, the slave himself jumped out, reportedly said, “How do you do, gentlemen?” and broke into song. The tale of Henry Box Brown has delighted and mystified Americans for more than 150 years. A true revolutionary, Brown didn’t fit the contemporaneous mold of an emancipated slave. He spent his free life performing, reenacting his escape, and creating spectacle shows of magic and hypnotism that amused fans and alarmed critics, including storied abolitionists of the time. Now, Professor of English and Africana Studies Martha Cutter will delve into the life and performance of this storied man with a 2019 National Endowment for the Humanities grant. She will use the $60,000 award, titled “The Lives and Afterlives of Henry Box Brown, the Slave Who Mailed Himself to Freedom,” to investigate the life …

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