Home » News » Implementation Division welcomes 2023 summer interns

Implementation Division welcomes 2023 summer interns

2023 implementation division summer interns; circle headshots of four female graduate students, ansley davis, shaelyn hawkins, cari carson, and alexandra morena

Implementation Division welcomes 2023 summer interns

June 1, 2023

The UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute's (FPG's) Implementation Division is pleased to welcome four interns for its fourth cohort of the Implementation Division Summer Internship Program. This paid internship program is designed to create a challenging and meaningful professional experience for masters' and doctoral students, providing exposure to implementation practice and research across a variety of fields and practice settings.

FPG’s Implementation Division consists of three workgroups—The Impact Center, the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN), and the Trohanis Technical Assistance Projects. Using implementation science, best practices, and an equity lens, the work of the division is active, applied, and facilitates improved outcomes for evidence-based practices. The division’s capacity-building work is tailored and flexible to meet the needs of the communities we work in whether the work is statewide, within a governance structure, community-wide, or within a service delivery agency or school.

Meet the new interns:

Ansley Davis is a licensed speech-language pathologist and a second-year doctoral student at the University of South Florida. She is pursuing her degree in communication sciences and disorders with a graduate certificate in translational research in adolescent behavioral health. Her research focuses on the interaction of cognition and language in learning patterns for school-aged children and adolescents. She is particularly interested in using eye-tracking methodology to study language processing. Davis' goal is to contribute to the dissemination of evidence-based language and literacy interventions for educational professionals. Davis is working with NIRN, which is in the process of finalizing its strategic plan and research agenda for the next 3-5 years. Davis will work with her mentor Rebekah Hornak, MA, on a detailed analysis of NIRN’s dissemination and communication efforts.  

Shaelyn Hawkins is earning her MPH in health equity, social justice, and human rights at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned her B.S. in human biology and society at UCLA. Hawkins' interests in public health include health equity and community health. Hawkins is working with the Impact Center at FPG with mentors Capri McDonald, MA, Ariel Everett, and Alana Gilbert, MPH, on embedding equity within resources produced by The Impact Center's Implementation Capacity for Triple P (ICTP) project.

The ICTP project in North Carolina provides resources and support to state, regional, and local Triple P coordinators; community Triple P lead agency and service agency leaders; statewide funders and policymakers; and other organizations providing implementation-focused training and technical assistance for Triple P in North Carolina. The project team develops learning and application resources to support local, regional, and state partners' efforts to implement and scale up Triple P across North and South Carolina. The Impact Center is committed to centering equitable implementation practice and resources.  

Cari Carson is a PhD student in the School of Education at UNC–Chapel Hill. In her professional as well as personal life, Carson has been a zealous advocate for students with disabilities. She is particularly passionate about improving outcomes for students of color with mental health-related disabilities. Carson holds degrees in law and social work from the University of Michigan. She is a former special education teacher who taught in Louisiana for two years prior to pursuing her law degree.
 
Alexandra Morena is pursuing her PhD in applied psychology and prevention science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She earned her M.A. in research psychology from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and her B.S. in neuroscience from Stonehill College. Alexandra’s research interests involve suicide prevention, implementation in healthcare and community settings, and understanding how provider characteristics promote best care practice use and adoption.  

Carson and Morena will be working with mentors Caryn Ward, PhD, and Sophia Farmer, MT on the Virginia’s Evidence-Based Practices Initiative: Transformation Zone project.

NIRN and partners within FPG will be providing a blended model of training, coaching, and consultation supports to support the implementation of the Virginia Evidence-Based Practice Initiative through a Transformation Zone approach. A Transformation Zone is a purposeful approach of working with a small number of local community teams (n = 3-4) within one or two regions that represent the diversity of perspectives across the state. Transformation Zones use the sciences of implementation and improvement to establish simultaneously the use of selected evidence-based practices and develop an implementation infrastructure for sustainability and scalability.