We are building a facility where collaboration between marriage and family therapy professionals and child development experts create a community of learning and engage services for students and families. This space will capitalize on our expertise in teaching practices in all areas of early childhood education and marriage and family therapy. Help us build the future!
Couple and Family Clinic
The Couple and Family Clinic is a mental health clinic that has been providing low-cost therapy services to individuals, couples, and families since 1993. Situated on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s East Campus, the clinic provides in-person and telehealth services to Lincoln and the greater Nebraska communities. The clinic is staffed by current marriage and family therapy clinical master’s students who are supervised by doctoral-level licensed clinicians. Through the marriage and family therapy program, future Nebraskan clinicians are trained to become ethical, systemically minded, multi-culturally sensitive, attachment-oriented and trauma-informed mental health clinicians who go on to work as therapists in community clinics, hospital settings, and in private practices throughout the state of Nebraska.
Ruth Staples Child Development Lab School
The mission of the Ruth Staples Child Development Lab School is carried out through education, service and research. Children, parents, students and faculty all learn from one another through the community of learning. Each component of the mission is complementary, enhancing the other components. Education and research could not exist without service to children and families; education and service are enhanced through research.
As a teacher-training facility, the CDL provides college students with essential experiences in early childhood education under the ongoing guidance and support of faculty. The service mission is fulfilled by providing the best possible developmentally appropriate early care and education; and by providing various consulting and support services in Lincoln, in Nebraska, and nationally. The research mission is fulfilled both informally through everyday classroom observations and formally through thorough planning and approval by the Institutional Review Board.
About Ruth Staples
Ruth Staples was born December 22, 1889, in Westborough, Massachusetts. She earned a diploma in 1911 from State Teachers College in Framingham, Massachusetts, a B.S. in 1922 from the University of Minnesota, an A.M. in 1926 from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in 1930 from the University of Minnesota.
Ruth was employed at the University of Nebraska from 1922 through 1956. She organized and initiated the establishment of the child development laboratory, serving as the Director from its beginning in 1925. Ruth was also instrumental in establishing courses in child development, teaching the first course, “Child Care and Training” in Fall 1926.
The CDL was directly or indirectly influenced by Ruth Staples for more than 50 years, including at least 27 years under her direct guidance. Because of her early leadership in the field of child development and the program at the University of Nebraska, the present child development laboratory, dedicated on June 5, 1970, was named the Ruth Staples Child Development Laboratory in her honor. She is also remembered for her continued interest in and knowledge of research in child development conducted at other institutions of higher learning across the United States.
