Family and Consumer Sciences Tech Prep

In the 2002-03 year the School of Family Studies was the recipient of a Perkins Tech Prep Grant to prepare students to the early stages of teaching. It was decided that the course to have taught at the high school level would be the HDFS 190: Individual and Family Development. The course was selected as it is one of the requirements for HDFS majors, education majors and health field majors.

The course was to be taught over a full year with 40 hours of internship hours at various stages of the life span. Students would receive credit for the class in high school and be matriculated as UCONN students and receive 3 credits if they earned a grade of C+ or better.

In the 2006-07 year, there are 21 high schools teaching HDFS 190. Several schools offer the class on an every-other-year basis. In two schools, teachers have retired and teachers have not been trained, unlike two additional schools who replaced retiring teachers in a timely manner to have their staff trained for the following year.

On Friday March 23, 2007 the Early College Experience HDFS 190 Program held its second annual Careers in Human Services Conference. Over twenty high schools from across Connecticut were in attendance with a total of 250 high school students. UConn students from the HDFS 180 course taught by Shannon Weaver, Ph.D., were also present for a portion of the day, bringing the total attendance to around 600 people. The conference focused on discussion about careers in Early Child Development, Education, Nursing, Social Services and Mental Health/Counseling; the afternoon’s poster session was the highlight of the conference, where over 70 posters were presented by the high school students. UConn students and faculty spoke with students in workshop sessions about their presentations on lifespan development issues.