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Candlelight Vigil 2018

Candlelight vigil for child abuse awareness set for March 28 at Penn State York

3/21/19

Penn State York students in the Human Development and Family Studies Club are preparing for the eighth annual candlelight vigil for child abuse awareness and prevention set for March 28 at the campus. Programming will begin at 4 p.m. as part of the weekly Coffee Hour in the conference center in the Main Classroom building. The vigil will take place at 5:30 p.m. outside the John J. Romano Administration Building.

York Universal Children's Day

Penn State York to celebrate Universal Children's Day

11/27/18

"If we don’t stand up for children, then we don’t stand for much.” This quote from Marian Wright Edelman explains the guiding force behind Penn State York’s third annual Universal Children Day celebration, set for 4 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 5, in the Precision Custom Components Community Room in the Joe and Rosie Ruhl Student Community Center

York Universal Children's Day

Penn State York to celebrate Universal Children's Day

11/13/18

“If we don’t stand up for children, then we don’t stand for much.” This quote from Marian Wright Edelman explains the guiding force behind Penn State York’s 3rd Annual Universal Children's Day celebration set for 4-6 p.m.Thursday, Nov. 15, in the conference center of the Main Classroom Building.

Students staffing a table

Penn State Lehigh Valley students raise money for a classmate to travel abroad

12/6/16

The Penn State Lehigh Valley campus hosted "We Are ... One World and We Are ... Penn State Lehigh Valley,” a community-service project that came out of a class assignment for HDFS 287 Intercultural Community-Building taught by Sandy Kile, instructor in communication arts and sciences. The goal was to raise a total of $500 to put toward one Penn State Lehigh Valley student attending a spring 2017 short-term study abroad program.

Human Development and Family Studies team to present at national conference

3/19/15

Faculty and graduate students in Penn State's Department of Human Development and Family Studies will present at the 2015 Society for Research and Child Development biennial meeting March 19-21 in Philadelphia. The event draws child development professionals and researchers from across the country.

Cynthia Lightfoot

Director of academic affairs appointed at Penn State Brandywine

5/9/14

Brandywine Professor and Program Coordinator of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) Cynthia Lightfoot has been named director of academic affairs (DAA) at Penn State Brandywine, effective July 1, 2014. She will take over for current Interim Director of Academic Affairs and Professor of Chemistry John Tierney, who has served as interim DAA for the past five months.

Jennifer Zosh, Brandywine Assistant Professor of HDFS

Children learn better when they figure things out for themselves

2/21/13

Toddlers learn new words more effectively by using their knowledge about the world to infer the label of an object, rather than by simply being instructed and told which word goes with which object, according to a Penn State human development and family studies researcher.

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Mont Alto students partner with seniors at local retirment home

12/17/12

During the fall 2012 semester, students in Cheryl Cheek's Adult Development and Aging class (HDFS 249) had the experience of learning about aging from those who are experiencing it. The 21 undergraduate students visited Quincy Village retirement community five times where they were paired with residents who became their Learning Partners. These partnerships allowed both groups to better understand the other's reality.

The students learned about topics related to aging in class and then went to Quincy Village to interview their Learning Partners about those topics. For example, when they learned the Life Course Theory of development, students interviewed their Learning Partners about their lives. Then the students wrote papers combining the classroom information with the real life experiences they learned about in the interviews. In the same way, when students learned about cognition (thinking), they did activities that involved memory with their Learning Partners and interviewed them about their memories.

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Professor's course offers insight into complex topics of adoption

4/25/12

In recent years, the idea of adoption has been seen regularly in the public eye as celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Madonna and Sandra Bullock are adopting internationally to grow their clans. However, there's a lot more to be said about adoption, and Jennifer Crissman Ishler, a senior instructor in human development and family studies (HDFS) at Penn State, has made it her mission to give students a crash course on the ins and outs of this complex process.

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Penn State Mont Alto class works to improve life for dementia patients

1/2/12

Cheryl Cheek, associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State Mont Alto, and 10 of her students have developed a "retro room" for dementia patients at the Quincy Village Retirement Community in Quincy, Pa. The project was part of a senior-level class on aging.

Cheek said the retro room is intended to help dementia patients recall a time when they were most comfortable -- in most cases, the 1950s and 1960s. While the concept has been practiced with success in Europe, it has not yet been applied in the United States. "I thought it would be a perfect project for the aging class I teach," she said.

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