In This Section:
Combining psychology and the law - Anne Dailey, law
Scoring students on the field and in the classroom - Scott Brown, education

Anne Dailey challenges long-held notions

Photo: Lanny Nagler

UConn law professor Anne Dailey is challenging long-held notions about the role of families in a strong, vibrant American democratic society. At the moment, she says, families are left on their own to raise productive citizens. In her view, government must do more to ensure that American children have the opportunity to one day fully engage in our democratic system of government.

Dailey is using psychoanalytic developmental psychology to show that the quality of early care children receive can affect the long-term development of the skills required for personal autonomy and political participation in a democratic society. She says the government should strengthen the rights of youth and better equip families with the tools needed to successfully raise their children. These governmental
responsibilities are necessary to realize a true democratic society, she says.

“Democratic freedom assumes certain psychological skills,” Dailey says, “such as critical self-reflection and emotional self-control. Acquiring those psychological skills requires certain social preconditions. People can have internal constraints that prevent them from fully living their own lives. These constraints begin in early childhood.”

Dailey’s thesis was recently recognized with a prestigious essay prize from the American Psychoanalytic Association. The award honors psychoanalytically informed research in the social sciences, arts and humanities. The paper will be published next year in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Psychoanalysis is a theory of personality that strives to understand how the unconscious mind works. It emphasizes the role of early experience in shaping present behavior.

In her essay Dailey illustrates how a psychoanalytic developmental perspective can be used to explain how poor childcare for the nation’s children jeopardizes the stability of the American democratic society.

“A child’s capacity for reason and self governance has to do with learning how to control emotions,” Dailey says. “Families with greater environmental stresses, such
as a extreme poverty, domestic violence and homelessness, have a harder time providing a soothing, responsive care-giving environment for their children.”

Dailey says the government should do all it can to provide families with what they need to create a relativity stable, long-term, care-giving relationship for their children.

“This also raises questions about workplace polices that would allow parents to maintain their jobs while adequately caring for their children,” Dailey says.

Melvin Lansky, who chaired the essay prize committee, says the spirit of the law professor’s essay excited the judges.

“She makes a giant leap from constitutional law to what we know about why kids do what they do,” Lansky says.

Dailey, who teaches family law at the UConn School of Law, says she has always been interested in the law’s perception of human nature and the role of the family in political life. She is writing a new book that explores how the tension between scientific and psychoanalytic psychology has influenced the development of the law and legal ideas.

“Psychoanalysis is a missing component today in law and legal scholarship,” Dailey says. “Psychoanalysis has a tremendous amount of empirical work to offer us about human behavior, about how people behave unconsciously in unintended and often self-destructive ways.”

— Peyton Woodson Cooper

Highly respected professor fills mandated NCAA faculty post

Photo: Peter Morenus

Scott Brown, professor of educational psychology in the Neag School of Education, meets with UConn students at the Gentry Building.

Five years ago when he was asked to be UConn’s NCAA faculty athletic representative, Scott Brown says he welcomed the opportunity.

“I see how hard these students work — academically and athletically — and how much they want to succeed in everything they do. It’s a pleasure working with them and helping them,” says Brown, a professor of educational psychology who previously served as chair of the UConn Advisory Committee on Athletics.

The NCAA established the mandatory position of faculty athletic representative for each of its member institutions in 1989 to “ensure academic integrity, facilitate institutional control of intercollegiate athletics, and enhance the student-athlete experience.”

“We take the term student-athlete very seriously,” says UConn President Philip E. Austin, who recently became chair of the NCAA Division I board of directors. “Whoever serves as faculty athletic representative plays a vital role in translating that term into an operating reality and, on an even more fundamental level, assuring the integrity of our athletic program.”

Brown continues to teach and conduct research and has earned the respect of his UConn colleagues. He was selected to administer the Teachers for a New Era Project, a $5 million grant from the Carnegie Corp., awarded to only seven universities. The grant — shared by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Neag School of Education — will increase research collaboration, analyze and redesign curriculum in general education and content courses, and develop new tools for assessing how the quality of teachers affects student performance.

“Scott is an outstanding teacher and advisor,” says Richard Schwab, dean of the Neag School of Education. “His students routinely give him the highest ratings, and he’s non-stop. He’ll keep teaching and researching regardless of his NCAA duties, his efforts on the Carnegie grant, and his other committee work. He loves teaching.”

That includes working with student-athletes, individually counseling freshmen about NCAA regulations, UConn rules, or the rigors of maintaining good grades while practicing 20 hours a week.

Brown’s lectures to freshman student-athletes are taking on renewed urgency in light of recent scandals that have rocked a number of universities and focused scrutiny on intercollegiate athletics programs. He is confident of UConn’s continued compliance with established guidelines for student-athletes.

“We have a good history of doing the right thing. We’re very careful and we’re constantly vigilant. We have good coaches who have high standards,” he says, noting his regular discussions with UConn colleagues in the athletics department and the Registrar’s Office, who work to ensure student-athletes are keeping up with their academic responsibilities and are on track for graduation.

Brown says the University’s goal is to have student-athletes graduate at a rate equal to or higher than the general student population, a goal that has been achieved several times in the past four years. Last year more than 40 percent of UConn’s slightly more than 600 student-athletes made the Dean’s List, achieving grade point averages of 3.0 or better, and a half-dozen earned a 4.0.

— Richard Veilleux