Barb Brown (email: barbara.brown@fcs.utah.edu; ph: 801-581-7111)

Barb is currently looking for a student to participate in her: Save the birds! Preventing bird strike deaths at the U!

Between 11/10/2017 and 12/11/2017 there were 16 bird strikes recorded along the northeast entryway windows to the Alfred Emery Building on President’s Circle, mostly by cedar waxwings. The windows in this area are very reflective so that birds do not perceive the glass surface until they fly into them. Estimates are that up to a billion birds may die annually in the U.S. from window strikes (Ocampo-Peñuela et al. 2016) in addition to impending extinction risks due to climate change (Wormworth and Sekercioglu 2011).

Dan Carlson (email: daniel.carlson@fcs.utah.edu; ph: 801-587-5664)

Dr. Carlson's scholarship focuses on understanding variation across gender, socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity in individuals’ family transitions and circumstances and the consequences of this variation for well-being and inequality. Currently, he is working on two projects. One investigates cohort change in the division of domestic labor in couples and how these shifts are associated with changes in relationship quality and sexual intimacy. The second examines how the concentration of single mother families in disadvantaged neighborhoods is associated with adolescents' substance use behaviors.

I would sponsor projects focusing on:

Health outcomes among children
The gendered division of labor
Family structure and child outcomes
Relationship quality in couples

Jessie Fan (email: fan@fcs.utah.edu; ph: 801-581-4170)

My main research interests are in the areas of physical and economic well-being of individuals and families with a focus on how they make resource allocation decisions to maximize their wellbeing. My recent research has focused on individual and neighborhood factors that affect health behavior and health outcomes such as weight status, including gender and age differences in subjectively measured physical activity, objectively measured physical activity and weight status, social and physical environmental correlates of active transportation, the relationship between food environment, neighborhood walkability and obesity risk. Over the years I have conducted research on how income, prices, lifecycle stage, and race/ethnicity affect overall family resource allocation patterns using complete demand system analysis, as well as consumer expenditures on specific consumption categories such as food, healthcare, and travel. I have extensive experience with a variety of economic methods and econometric techniques related to modeling individual behavior within their social contexts.

Dr. Fan would like to work with students who have an interest in the following two areas.

Topics related to consumer expenditure and consumer saving/borrowing/investment behavior.
Topics related to patterns of physical activity and obesity.

Lori Kowaleski-Jones (email: lori.kowaleski-jones@fcs.utah.edu; ph: 801-585-0074)

Dr. Kowaleski-Jones would like to work with students who have an interest in public policy and families, food policy and energy balance, neighborhood effects on health and well being, environmental issues, and youth issues.

Kevin Rathunde (email: rathunde@fcs.utah.edu; ph: 801-581-5392)

Dr. Rathunde would be interested supervising students who would like to explore the connections between the arts and social science. For example, there are a number of arts based methods currently used in social science research. Even though these methods are unconventional and out of the mainstream, an interesting thesis topic might be to undertake a critical review of these alternative methods in order to discuss their strengths and weaknesses.

For a student who already has a strong interest in the arts (e.g., music, creative writing, photography, and so on), a student might consider a thesis that uses one of these alternatives, art-based methods to conduct research on a particular topic of interest.

Ken Smith (email: ken.smith@fcs.utah.edu; ph: 801-581-7847)

Dr. Smith would like to work with students who have an interest in the following questions.

How best to collect data to get family medical history?
Is the CDC recommendation optimal? [This is a national call to have people learn about their family medical history.]
Assess subjective longevity (how long do you think you will live) among students and factors that might contribute to it?
What would be an optimal lifespan?

Nick Wolfinger (email: nick.wolfinger@fcs.utah.edu; ph: 801-581-7491)

Dr. Wolfinger would like to work with students who have an interest in the changing economics of single motherhood: divorced women and women who give birth out of wedlock.

Cheryl Wright (email: cheryl.wright@fcs.utah.edu; ph: 801-581-7712)

Dr. Wright would like to work with students who have an interest in using technology to facilitate personal, social and vocational skills in students on the autism spectrum.

Zhou Yu (email: zhou.yu@fcs.utah.edu; ph: 801-585-0437)

Dr. Yu would like to work with students who have an interest in the following two areas.

Housing: Housing Policy, Affordable Housing Policy, the Use of LIHTC in Utah, Public Housing Projects in Utah, Co-Housing, Gentrification, Homeownership among Young People, and Household Formation among Immigrants.

Immigration: Immigrants in Utah, Housing Demand among Immigrants in Utah, Barriers for Immigrants to Achieve Homeownership, the Internal Migration of the Foreign-born in the U.S. and the In-migration of the Foreign-born to Utah.

Currently, he is studying the patterns of the floating population in urban China and the factors behind the changing patterns in recent years.

He is also examining the role of intergenerational transfer on housing attainment in urban China, where housing prices have increased significantly in recent years and housing has become a major means of wealth accumulation.

Cathleen Zick (email: zick@fcs.utah.edu; ph: 801-581-3147)

Wasatch Community Gardens (WCG) offers youth gardening programs that provide a range of opportunities for youth to get their hands dirty in one of WCG's two teaching gardens.

Each year approximately 1,500 urban, low-income youth in the Salt Lake Valley have some contact with WCG's youth gardening program. Activities range from weekly gardening classes where youth can have the experience of planting seeds, tending them, and harvesting the bounty, to school-related field trips where students may spend only an hour or two learning about gardening (see: http://wasatchgardens.org/youtb-programs-ovcrview). WCG is interested in learning bow these experiences impact children's lives. This honors thesis or UROP project would involve working with Professor Zick and the WCG staff to gather data from youth participating in WCG's programs with the goal of assessing how this programming links to changes in youths' attitudes about food.

My research interests span two domains:

Family/consumer policies
Household time use

Of late, I have been undertaking research using historical time diary data to investigate the role of women’s food preparation time in the quality of the American diet. The data I have been using comes from 1936, 1952, 1977, 1985, 2003, and 2015. I have also been working on an intervention study where 500 high-risk minority women living in Utah were enrolled in a year-long physical activity/diet coaching intervention. The focus of my work in this project has been to assess the cost-effectiveness of the intervention and to look at changes in the women’s time use.

Both of the above projects make use of quantitative data and there are a number of questions that have yet to be answered with these data that would make good honors quantitative thesis projects. I would be happy to meet with any FCS student who was interested in working on a quantitative honors thesis – especially one that might be supported by a UROP where the student would get paid for the research.

STUDENT FEATURE: My Experience doing an Honors Thesis

Carly Shields

This year I became involved with a research project in the Family and Consumer Studies department focused on autism and its implications in the healthcare setting. Specifically, my research is focused on examining Utah health care professionals’ experiences treating children with autism and the role training and policies have on these experiences. This research project brought two of my passions together: health care and children, as well as a need in the community.

I am slated to present my research to legislators at the Utah State Capitol at the end of February. Thus, my research has provided me the opportunity to positively impact the healthcare experience of youth with autism in Utah.

My research experience has been unlike anything else during my undergraduate career. The hands-on nature of research has allowed me to apply what I am learning in my classes to real-life situations. I have gained innumerable skills from being involved in the entire research process (e.g. developing, editing, and distributing surveys, analyzing data, summarizing results, etc.). Personally, I believe my involvement in research is giving me valuable perspective, knowledge, and skills for my future career as a physician. After this experience, I believe I will be more capable of treating patients (especially those diagnosed ASD) in my future practice.