UTEP Professors Receive Award, Recognition for Veteran Research
Husband-and-wife UTEP professors Emre Umucu, Ph.D., and Beatrice Lee, Ph.D., have earned a prestigious recognition from the American Counseling Association (ACA). The Research Award from the ACA’s American Rehabilitation Counseling Association (ARCA) recognizes their work evaluating stress’s effect on the well-being of veterans with and without chronic conditions.
Their research aims to better understand how to support veterans as they transition from a rigid military environment to a less-structured way of life.
“This award from the American Rehabilitation Counseling Association for Dr. Umucu and Dr. Lee’s work is a prestigious acknowledgement of the important research being conducted within UTEP’s College of Health Sciences,” said William Robertson, Ph.D., dean of the College of Health Sciences. “Through their efforts, they are achieving great impacts through high quality scholarly efforts in supporting veteran’s populations.”
ARCA is the premier association for rehabilitation and health research, practice and professional development. Awards are given to recognize high-quality empirical research – or research based on derived experiences – conducted within the field.
Through their research, Umucu and Lee aimed to answer two questions: do veterans with or without disabilities experience undue stress while transitioning into college life? And if they do, can it be mediated through hope, resilience, core self-evaluations (which includes traits like self-esteem, emotional stability and self-efficacy) and social support?
“One of the biggest barriers in working with veteran populations is the stigma around mental health,” Umucu said. “But both of us work with positive psychology. Instead of focusing on your symptoms and pathology, like depression, PTSD, we try to focus on how to increase happiness, resiliency and gratitude.”
Lee added that focusing on veterans’ strengths is key to helping them improve their circumstances.
“Once we know their strengths, we can identify interventions and resources to improve their stress, like increasing their levels of hope or resilience and through targeted intervention.”
They surveyed more than 200 veterans to accomplish the work. Thirty-nine percent of those who participated in the survey had disabilities sustained during their service. Surveys sent to these participants analyzed their stress levels and how their measures of hope, resilience, core self-evaluations and social support helped to mediate the challenge. In their findings, they noticed a correlation between core self-evaluations and social support and a positive impact on stress.
In addition, Umucu’s program I-REACH (Improving Rural Enrollment, Access and Health in) at the Michigan Center for Rural Health – which works to provide important health care to veterans living in rural areas – was recently honored by the Denis McDonough, the U.S. Secretary of Veteran Affairs. McDonough visited the I-REACH-participating hospital in rural Michigan to recognize the successes of the program and to discuss what more can be done to support veterans in rural areas.
Both Umucu and Lee came to this kind of research with extensive experience analyzing veterans, disabilities and chronic health conditions that disproportionately impact historically underrepresented populations. The couple met while completing their graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and now their research and their lives will forever be interconnected.
The couple will be honored for their work at the ACA conference in New Orleans, Louisiana in April 2024.
Last Updated on February 29, 2024 at 12:00 AM | Originally published February 29, 2024
By Julia Hettiger UTEP Marketing and Communications
