Brief Bio Sketch

Up Brief Bio Sketch Selected Publications Funding Coursework & Students TimeWise Description HealthWise South Africa

I received my Ph.D. at the University of Maryland in 1986. My research interests center on the intersection of youth, leisure and health, using a prevention framework that focuses on developing youth competencies and healthy leisure and reducing risky behavior in leisure. I work from an interdisciplinary perspective and combine leisure, prevention, and human development. Recently I have been a principal or co-principal investigator on two major research projects funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The first was the development and evaluation of a new school-based curriculum, TimeWise: Taking Charge of Leisure Time (ETR Associates). I have also worked with colleagues at Penn State and the University of the Western Cape and Cape Town University to develop and evaluate the HealthWise South Africa: Life Skills for Young Adults curriculum, which is being delivered and evaluated in Cape Town, South Africa. Both of these curricula are geared toward middle school youth.

I have had the good fortune to present and conduct research in many international contexts, including Australia, Chile, Germany, Guatemala, Slovenia, South Africa, and Togo. I have served as the guest editor for the Journal of Park and Recreation Administration's special issue on Youth and Leisure (2000), for a special issue of Therapeutic Recreation Journal on youth (2001), and was a co-guest editor of a special issue of children and adolescent leisure for World Leisure Journal (2003).  Currently I sit on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Association of Leisure Studies and am secretary of the Children and Youth working group of the World Leisure Association. In 2001 I was the recipient of the National Therapeutic Recreation Association Professional Research Award and also inducted into the Academy of Leisure Sciences. In 2005 I received the Allen V. Sapora Research Award for excellence in research.

I love traveling, gardening, cooking, photography, being in nature (especially scuba diving, hiking and camping), and spending time with my husband and cats.