Faculty...
The Director of the Human Development & Family Studies Study Abroad Program,
Dr. Margaret Benson, began her career working in early childhood education. She worked with Head Start, and community day care in New York and Pennsylvania before going back to school to get her Ph.D. Her teaching interests include child development, early childhood education, and professional ethics for the human services. Her research is on children's development of narrative skill, and recently she has become interested in social policy and the quality of early care and education. She has presented papers at the National Head Start Research Conferences, at the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and at the Society for Research in Child Development. Her articles have been published in
Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, and Early Childhood Research Quarterly.
Associate Director of the Human Development & Family Studies Study Abroad Program,
Dr Cheryl Cheek, associate professor of Human Development & Family Studies, at Penn State Mont Alto, has an international background. She was born in England, lived in Ethiopia as a child, and studied in Germany as an undergraduate. She worked as a mental health therapist before going back to school to receive her doctorate in Human Development and Family Studies. Her teaching interests include ethics in the human services, research methods, and aging. Her area of research interest is adult development, and she enjoys studying the ways in which women's identities are developed and expressed. She is an avid quilter, and has published articles related to identity expression in quilting in
The International Journal of Aging and Human Development and the Journal of Women and Aging. This year, before coming to Rome, she will be studying quilting in the British Isles. She has presented a paper in Dublin, Ireland, on women's experiences in caring for terminally ill husbands.
Associate Director of the Human Development & Family Studies Study Abroad Program,
Dr. Robin Yaure, senior instructor of Human Development & Family Studies, at Penn State Mont Alto has interests in the cultural context of parenting and child care, co-sleeping arrangements, and child development. She has studied co-sleeping arrangements and decision-making processes of experts and in universities. She has been working on a project studying quilters working on the Quilts of Valor project with Dr. Cheek. She is also very interested in the application of technology in educational settings.
