Dr. Barbara Burns
Barbara M. Burns is the new Director of Liberal Studies (Child Studies, Pre-Teaching and Urban Education) at Santa Clara University. Prior to joining SCU, Dr. Burns was Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Louisville where she directed the Early Intervention for Families Lab. She has served as the Chief Clinical Officer of the Early Intervention Program, NYC Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene (DoHMH), and as a Consultant for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NCBDDD Child Development Legacy Team. She has served as the Editor of the National Head Start Association journal Dialog:A Research-to-Practice Journal for the Early Intervention Field (2004-2008), and she continues to serve on the Editorial Board. Barbara Burns is a developmental psychologist who has worked in both the public and private sectors with colleagues in education, public health, pediatrics, social work, and psychiatry. The overall goal of her work has been to enhance well-being and school success in young children from families experiencing extreme economic hardship, disadvantage and stress. Together with her students, she has published more than 50 articles and book chapters and presented more than 200 talks focused on risk and resilience related to school readiness, and the complex relations among child temperament, attention skills and motivation. Her research has shown that family factors, such as parent-child interactions, maternal temperament and mental health, impact young children’s attention and self-control skills related to school readiness. Her findings have underscored the need for early intervention in high risk families and suggest that programs are needed which strengthen children’s attention skills, executive functioning, and mastery motivation, as well as increase parents’ knowledge of early development and the brain, specifically the significance of attachment relations, childhood exposure to violence, stress management, and individual differences in temperament. Across the last ten years she has developed and piloted workshops for high-risk parents which focus on increasing parents’ resilience and knowledge regarding what children need for cognitive and social-emotional well-being. Most recently, she has worked with the Wayside Christian Mission at Hotel Louisville in Louisville, KY to provide resilience workshops for families experiencing homelessness, and has traveled with students to Botswana to provide workshops on stress, mindfulness and goal setting for children and staff working with street children at the Hope Mission Orphanage in Gaborone, Botswana. Dr. Burns brought to Santa Clara University a passion to promote family resilience and school success in children from families experiencing poverty and extreme stress. Since coming to SCU, she has established partnerships with the Georgia Travis Center and Bill Wilson Center, two community agencies focused on serving families experiencing homelessness. Dr. Burns has recruited students interested in early childhood adversity and parenting and has established the Resilient Families Project (RFP) Team. Starting in October, the RFP team began providing a weekly program for families at three community sites. Our family resilience program employs discussion, crafts and music to increase child development knowledge and support compassion for self, and to decrease stress, anger and reactive discipline. At these same sites, the RFP team also provides workshops for young children designed to increase awareness of emotions and healthy behaviors and decrease childhood stress. Through extensive direct contact with families experiencing homelessness and extreme disadvantage, SCU students are learning to apply their knowledge and skills of developmental science to community problems and contribute to social justice. If you are interested in learning more about the Resilient Families Project contact Dr. Burns at bmburns@scu.edu. |
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