ShowMe Healthy Relationships (SMHR) is a 5-year project funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. It is a partnership between the University of Missouri Extension, University of Missouri Department of Human Development and Family Science, and three Community Family Agencies who have come together to help singles and couples have happy and healthy relationships. We actively recruit members of the general public into our project, with an emphasis on reaching low-resource families and individuals in 21 counties across Missouri. Under the leadership of Dr. Chelsea Garneau-Rosner, we utilize surveys to examine changes in participants’ behaviors related to their couple relationships, family and personal well-being, as well as household stability.
- Can comprehensive services reduce the negative spill-over of stressors low-income individuals experience?
- Can we improve relationship quality and stability with these interventions?
- Does strengthening relationships have implications for future socioeconomic status?
- Can booster sessions promote the effectiveness of these interventions over time?
- Can we identify specific moderators to program success?
- What aspects of our services were most beneficial to families’ long-term success?
- Strengthen families across Missouri.
- Provide experience working on a multi-year federally funded grant to undergraduate and graduate students.
- Extend knowledge on best practices in bridging the gap between basic and applied research in a community setting.
- Build relationships with community agencies across the state of Missouri.
Chelsea Garneau-Rosner (Principal Investigator) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at the University of Missouri. She conducts research to better understand the associations among family processes (e.g., positive couple interactions, coparenting support, parenting behaviors, and family cohesion) and individual, couple, and family well-being, with a particular emphasis on complex families (e.g., stepfamilies and those parenting children across multiple households). Through better understanding the mechanisms behind healthy relationships in complex families, Dr. Garneau-Rosner’s program of research aims to identify effective strategies for professionals working with families in clinical and community settings to improve individual and family well-being. She lives with her husband, Seth, her stepson, and their beagle in Columbia, Missouri.
Melissa Herzog (Performance Measurement and Evaluation Manager) is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science and Department of Special Education at the University of Missouri. She earned her PhD in Human Development and Family Science and a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy from Arizona State University. Since 2009 Dr. Herzog has served as project coordinator on two separate grants funded by the US Department of Education focused on developing and evaluating the efficacy of a social competence intervention (SCI) for children and youth with high functioning forms of autism and training teachers to implement the group curriculum with fidelity in school settings throughout Missouri. Dr. Herzog also serves as lead faculty for the MU’s Youth Development program, which focuses on training Masters level students to utilize strengths-based approaches and opportunities to encourage positive outcomes for youth in a variety of settings. She is particularly interested in the reciprocal relationships of youth and families across adolescence, strategies to better engage families in education and youth development programming, and the role of families related to adolescent sexuality, pregnancy, and parenthood.
Emily Logan (Program Coach and Senior Office Support) has a BS in Psychology and MS in Higher Education. She has worked in various roles at the University of Missouri and Missouri State University since 2010 serving to support faculty, staff, and students in pursuit of life, academic, and career goals. She has particular interests in healthy habits and relationships, financial management, parenting, and overall personal wellbeing – all of which are topics and classes offered by ShowMe Healthy Relationships! She is excited to work with singles and couples in Missouri in hopes of helping to strengthen their relationships.
Kelly Warzinik (Project Manager) has a BS in Human Environmental Sciences and MS in Family Studies from the University of Missouri. After obtaining her MS, she worked as Waupaca County Family Living Educator for University of Wisconsin-Extension from 2000-2003 where her responsibilities included developing and implementing parent education programs for at-risk families, grandparents raising grandchildren, and distributing parenting newsletters. She worked on several community and county committees promoting healthy family relationships. From 2007-2008, she served as the University of Missouri Extension Project Manager for Connecting for Children, a partnership with Central Missouri Community Action-Head Start to offer healthy relationship education retreats for couples. From 2008-2014, she served as Project Manager for the Healthy Relationship and Marriage Education Training (HRMET) project, an 8-state partnership funded by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Grant: 90CT0151. HRMET provided healthy relationship and marriage education training for child welfare professionals to help meet the safety, permanency, and well-being needs of children in the child welfare system. She also assisted in the development of the Strong Parents, Stable Children curriculum, which is one program offered as part of SMHR. As SMHR Project Manager, she looks forward to continuing to promote healthy couple and coparenting relationships to help strengthen families. Kelly and her husband, Jason, reside in Columbia with their two daughters and three cats.
Elif Dede Yildirim is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at the University of Missouri. She received her Ph.D. in Child and Family Studies from Syracuse University. Her research focuses on the links between maternal and paternal parenting practices (e.g. psychological aggression, physical punishment, warmth and responsiveness) and children’s socio-emotional and cognitive competence in different racial/ethnic and cultural groups in the United States and other societies.
Ashton Chapman (Research and Implementation Consultant) obtained a Master’s degree in Family Studies in 2014 and a Doctoral degree in the department of Human Development and Family Science at the University of Missouri in 2017. She is passionate about translatable science and the creation of accessible evidence-based programs that promote the betterment of persons, families, and communities, particularly those who are under-served. Ashton previously served as an Educator for SMHR and has transitioned into a Research and Implementation Consultant, working on program evaluation projects and providing consultation to the SMHR implementation team. In addition to her SMHR roles, Ashton has co-taught post-divorce coparenting classes through Focus on Kids, has led family enhancement classes as a part of Building Strong Families, and has served as a consultant for military family financial planning trainings overseen by the Military Family Research Institute. Ashton’s enthusiasm for science-based outreach, coupled with her experience as a relationship and family educator, speak to her desire to bridge existing gaps between academies and communities.
Alaysia Brown (Graduate Research Assistant & Educator) received her BA in Psychology from the University of San Diego in 2016. She is currently working towards a Doctorate in Human Development and Family Sciences. Her research interests include exploring the impact of skin-tone based discrimination and its influence on self-esteem, belongingness, and romantic relationships in adolescence and young adulthood. They also include examining family and sociocultural influences on sexual behavior and intimate partnerships.
Jeremy Kanter (Graduate Research Assistant & Educator) is currently working towards his doctoral degree in Human Development and Family Science. His general interests include strengthening couples’ relationships throughout the life-course. He has had previous experience working with relationship education on a multi-state initiative and is part of a team of scholars developing a relationship education App.
Nate Stoddard (Graduate Research Assistant & Educator) received a BS in Family Science in 2013 and a MS in Marriage, Family, and Human Development 2015, both from Brigham Young University. He is currently working toward a PhD in Human Environmental Sciences. His research focuses on family processes that help relationships be healthy, so he is excited to teach classes using that kind of research in order to help people work on improving their own relationships.
Caroline Sanner (Educator) obtained a Master’s Degree in Human Development and Family Science from the University of Missouri in 2016. Her research interests focus on relational dynamics in divorced and remarried families. Specifically, Caroline’s interests involve identifying positive stepfamily processes and extending that knowledge to the community to promote healthy relationships in complex family networks.
Sarah Almalki (Educator) received her MA (2011) and BA (2007) in Family and Consumer Science/ Home Economic Education from King-Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Currently, Sarah is a Ph.D. student in the department of Human Development and Family Science at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Her research interests include family life education and enrichment, intimate and romantic relationships, and multicultural feminism. She wants to explore the unique challenges that arise from developing and implementing family life education programs specifically for populations that are culturally diverse. She is excited about her work with ShowMe Healthy Relationships as it relates to her own area of study and aims to promote healthy family function and provide strength to the family unit through an educational approach.
Emily Manning (Educator) received her BS in Family Consumer Science Education from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2016. Emily is pursuing a MA in Lifespan Development at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is interested in rural communities, adolescent development, and family processes. She is excited to teach classes that help promote healthy relationships as it relates to her interest of applying research for the benefit of families and individuals.
Department of Human Development and Family Science
Gentry Hall
Columbia, MO 65211
Phone: (573) 882-4035
E-mail: garneauc@missouri.edu
SMHR E-mail: admin@showmehealthyrelationships.com