9 minute read
LEADING WITH EXPERIENCE
INTRODUCING DR. AMY S. THOMPSON AND DR. PAUL PELUSO
By Joshua Duke
Anne’s College continues to grow and flourish, with five departments and a school home to nearly four thousand students. Over the summer, two of these — the Department of Human Development and Family Science (HDFS) and the School of Teacher Education (STE) — welcomed new faculty members from other universities to serve as leaders. Dr. Amy S. Thompson became the new director of the School of Teacher Education, while Dr. Paul Peluso became the new chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Science. We recently sat down with both of them to learn more about their backgrounds and their vision for their respective departments.
A LOVE OF LANGUAGE
On top of being the director of the School of Teacher Education, Dr. Amy S. Thompson is the Mack and Effie Campbell Distinguished Professor. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, and her master’s and doctoral degrees from Michigan State University. Before coming to Florida State University, she was a Woodburn professor, chair of the Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, Director of International Relations and Strategic Planning for Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, and co-director of the English Language Learning Institute at West Virginia University.
Her personal research interests focus on multilingualism and applied linguistics or second language acquisition. A love of language helped her ultimately discover her professional path.
“I took French in high school, and I really liked it. I really liked the way that speaking in another language let me develop another part of my personality. When I speak French, I feel like I’m a different person than when I speak English,” Thompson said.
Her love for French continued into college and only intensified when she studied abroad for a year in France. She ended up majoring in French with minors in Deaf Habilitation and Art, but despite her academic excellence, Thompson was still unsure what she wanted to do professionally. She was offered a job on campus, but almost at the same time, she received an English teaching assistantship through Fulbright to return to France.
“Was I going to go back to France to live and work for a year? Or was I going to take this full-time job with benefits and a bigger salary and, you know, start adulting more? And I chose the non-adulting path,” she joked. “I took the Fulbright!”
While it may seem impulsive in hindsight, the decision was instrumental to her career path. While teaching in France, Thompson found a book about linguistics at a used bookstore, which sparked her interest. Through her experience with the Fulbright Program, she also wanted to become a better teacher.
As her year in France came to an end, she learned that she had received a Rotary Scholarship to go to Costa Rica and learn Spanish. The intensive Spanish program solidified her love of language learning and exploring different cultures. “Through reading books, talking with people, and understanding different career paths, I realized that this was a career I could choose,” Thompson said. Suddenly, her passion for language became a way to make a living. Soon thereafter, Thompson applied to graduate school, and the rest is history.
BIENVENUE TALLAHASSEE
Thompson has not been in Tallahassee long, but already she feels comfortable in her role as director of the School of Teacher Education, working alongside her colleagues and students. She cites the welcoming attitude as one of her favorite parts of Florida State University.
“What I have been really impressed about in the School of Teacher Education are the faculty and staff. As much as that may sound cliché, I found everyone to be very welcoming of me, very excited that I’m coming as an external hire, which is not always the case,” she said.
One of the first things she did was invite faculty members to meet with her one-on-one over the summer. Despite the fact that many faculty members do not teach over the summer, Thompson still met with about 35 people.
I think the willingness to come in during summer to meet the new director shows how much the faculty care about STE and its success.
These meetings solidified two things: the passion and the talent of the School of Teacher Education faculty. “I’m really happy to be here,” she said. “People have come to me with research ideas, with teaching ideas that are really creative and innovative, and we’ve been trying to figure out different resources to do some of these different initiatives. I’m impressed that people want to change up things and go forward and not just maintain the status quo.”
A VOICE FOR FLORIDA TEACHERS
One of the unique aspects of Florida State University is the fact that campus is just down the road from the Florida Capitol. As such, Thompson believes that the School of Teacher Education has an important role to play during legislative sessions. Not only can the school add an important voice to legislation affecting the K-12 system, but Thompson also believes that FSU’s proximity helps faculty grasp new laws quickly to then educate current students.
“We’re able to go listen to different discussions that may happen in the legislative sessions and have the opportunity to really understand how the legislation affects not just us as faculty and as a university, but really the K-12 system because many of our teacher education programs are preparing our students to work in that system.”
A PART OF THE FAMILY
Dr. Paul Peluso is the Norejane Hendrickson Endowed Professor and chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Science. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut, and his master’s, specialist and doctorate degrees from Georgia State University. He came from the Department of Counselor Education in Florida Atlantic University’s College of Education, where he held many titles during his career; he previously served as a professor of mental health counseling, a department chair, and as a senior associate dean.
Now chair of the FSU Human Development and Family Science department, Peluso brings his experience to Tallahassee. Already, he feels like a part of the HDFS family. He is amazed at how “legitimately nice people are. And it does not feel like a put-on. People have genuinely been helpful, people have genuinely gone out of their way to be helpful, to make sure that my transition to Tallahassee has been a good one.”
You hear people talk about [kindness], but I think you hear people talk about that in a lot of places, and a lot of times it’s more aspirational than real.
Peluso also remarked on just how special the faculty members in HDFS are. “The scholars who are here in the department, whether they be tenure track faculty or specialized faculty who concentrate on teaching, are genuinely passionate about the field. We have some incredible researchers doing cutting-edge research. They’re looking at really important questions facing families, relationships, and child development, as well as the clinical application of some of these answers.”
FINDING HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
One of the interesting things that Peluso discovered during his first semester as chair is just how passionate the students are about human development and family science. However, many of them come from different majors. “Particularly at the bachelor’s level with Human Development and Family Science, they find us because they’ve taken one of our courses as an elective. They come to discover that this is really the field that they were looking for to study.”
Peluso continued, “The major creates so many opportunities for people to branch into different directions, whether they go a clinical route, a human services route. They can go into healthcare; some of our students work in hospitals, or work in healthcare settings. And a number of our students work in policy areas or go on to become researchers.”
A MULTI-FACETED BACKGROUND
If anyone needed proof of the different directions a person can take with a degree in human development and family science, Peluso is exhibit A. He has worked in a number of settings, from private practice and agency settings to research studies and more. He has authored 12 books focused primarily on marriage and family therapy, but he has also published a new book on executive coaching.
His personal research interest focuses on infidelity, as well as examining effective therapy. “I’ve always wanted to learn what the ingredients were for the secret sauce that the masters have when they demonstrate just brilliant therapy. What goes on there, and how do they do it?”
He became interested in human development and family science due to a drive to help people and to find out what makes people tick. He demonstrated this immediately upon graduating with his bachelor’s, as he worked at a substance abuse treatment facility. “We would see incredible change. They would live [at the facility] full time. Then, they would become leaders, embrace a recovery mindset, and be serious about sobriety. We would graduate them, and they would go back home to a situation that hadn’t changed at all, and within about three months, they would wind up relapsing and then come back to us.”
That experience solidified in Peluso’s mind the importance of the family system in the life of an individual. “You have to change the system as well as the individual because you can make all the great changes to the individual, but if you put them back into a system that hasn’t changed, then it’s very difficult for them to make gains,” he said.
A NEW CHAPTER
Both Peluso and Thompson bring something new to their respective departments, and with new leadership comes new changes. As the Department of Human Development and Family Science and the School of Teacher Education continue to evolve, they will undoubtedly provide even more opportunities for students to explore their interests, make meaningful contributions, and impact society positively. ∎
