Family & Child Sciences

Department Overview

We seek to understand and enhance healthy personal relationships, parent and child relationships, and families in their natural settings. Our programs focus on child and family processes and empirically supported relationship interventions. Although our curriculum is comprehensive, our research, teaching, and service activities address three areas:

• Relationship development and enhancement in young adults, couples, and families
• Distressed families and relational interventions
• The link between parenting processes and relationship outcomes

If you want to work with people, then the programs offered in the Department of Family and Child Sciences are for you.

We prepare students to pursue careers in a variety of human service settings, such as schools, residential treatment facilities, military family support programs, child care programs and family and child advocacy organizations. Our graduates assist individuals, couples, families, and communities to successfully cope with the challenges and complexities of life today.

Undergraduate Majors

The Bachelors in Family and Child Sciences is designed to help students understand how individuals and families change over the life course. We prepare graduates to work in applied settings with children, youth, and families, including human service agencies, child care settings, family life education, cooperative extension and related positions in business, industry, and government.

We also offer a minor in Child Development. Please click here for more information.

Master’s and Doctoral Degrees

We offer a Master of Science in Family and Child Sciences, as well as a Doctorate of Philosophy in Human Sciences (Family Relations specialization) and in Marriage and Family Therapy. We are actively looking for the very best students with diverse experiences to join us. We have expertise in relationship development and enhancement, working with distressed families (e.g., foster care, divorce and remarriage), family contributions to child development, and program development and evaluation. Students are given solid mentorship, and financial support when possible.