Childhood trauma and health subject of February 27 Usher Lecture

Dr. Amy Warren, Director of Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment and Professor of Education at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, will give a lecture titled “How Your Young Mama’s Drama May Have Affected You” as part of the Jess Usher Lecture Series on February 27.

The lecture explores how trauma during childhood affects health later in life and also may affect outcomes for the children of those who experience trauma. Warren has conducted research looking at the childhood trauma of teen mothers involved in the justice system and the social and emotional development of their children.

“Adversity in childhood has been linked to a multitude of negative life course outcomes such as health problems and depression,” Warren said. “More recent research is linking these same traumas to negative outcomes in the next generation. This research is telling us that who we are is much more complicated than the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate would have us believe.”

Warren received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Early Childhood Education from Florida State University. Upon graduating from FSU, she began work for FSU’s Center for Prevention and Early Intervention Policy as a resource teacher, later as the education coordinator for the Center’s Early Head Start Program, and finally as an Infant and Toddler Specialist and Trainer for FSU’s Partner’s for a Healthy Baby Home Visiting Curriculum. She went on to complete her Ph.D. in Early Childhood as well as a doctoral certificate in Program Evaluation. Her research interests include adverse childhood experiences, bio-adjacent perspectives on Epigenetics and transmission of trauma, infant and toddler development, program assessment, measurement of student learning outcomes, and instructional pedagogy in higher education.

“Parental DNA and how genes are expressed can be altered during times of extreme stress in childhood,” she said. “These changes can then be passed on later in life to their children and grandchildren. In order to consider how some of these effects might be mitigated, we need to know more about the mechanisms that transmit childhood trauma across generations.”

The lecture is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at ABAC’s Howard Auditorium. Each Usher Lecture Series event is free and open to the public.

The Jess Usher Lecture Series features a carefully curated slate of dynamic presentations, drawn from a wide range of disciplines and delivered by distinguished members of the ABAC faculty as well as distinguished guest lecturers. Formerly known as the ABAC Lecture Series, this special collection has been renamed in memory of Dr. Jess Usher, a beloved ABAC professor and former lecturer in the series, who passed away in June 2021.