Patty Kuo, associate professor of child youth and family studies, is the recipient of the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award through the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor.
The annual award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated excellence in mentoring and supporting undergraduate researchers. Excellent undergraduate mentors support students through their availability, attentiveness, encouragement, and understanding.
“Winning this award feels full circle," Kuo said. "Everything I’ve accomplished in my academic career started when I was an undergraduate student.
“My undergraduate research mentor, Dr. Karen Grewen, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, gave me so much creative freedom in her lab while training me in rigorous scientific techniques. She nurtured a passion and fostered a great deal of self-confidence, nurturing my growth and self-mastery. It’s why I try to push my students as far as their dreams take them.”
Kuo is the director of the Nebraska Strong Families Lab that accepts Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experience (UCARE) and First-Year Research Experience (FYRE) students. Kuo has spent more than a decade studying fathers and families and is most well-known for her research on hormone changes that accompany father-child interactions. Her work focuses on fathers and applying a biopsychosocial model to understand how multiple levels of influence (e.g., hormones, gender roles, close relationships) shape the nature of paternal involvement from infancy through preschool years. She draws inspiration for her research from across social science fields and enjoys designing studies to ask big-picture questions about family and child development.
She is currently an associate editor for the international family studies journal, Family Process, and serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Family Psychology, Psychology of Men & Masculinity, and SRCD Monographs.
College of Education and Human Sciences
Child, Youth and Family Studies
