Amy Bintliff
2025 URH Faculty Mentor Award Recipient
Please tell us a bit about your educational background and current research.
I was a public school teacher with a Master's Degree in Education for 18 years before going back to school to earn my PhD in Educational Psychology-Human Development. As a teacher, I had designed some innovative programs for youth at-risk and I wanted to learn how to evaluate programming that supports adolescent learning and mental health simultaneously. I also wanted to continue my work on community engagement and service learning and work in diversity and equity in education. This work began as a high school teacher and now continues in my current role as the Partners at Learning (PAL) program director within Education Studies. The PAL program is one of the largest service learning programs on campus. Our undergraduate students volunteer for 40 hours per quarter in under-resourced schools and nonprofit organizations throughout the county. Thus, I research service-learning programs and engage in community based participatory research in the U.S. and Uganda. Our joint undergraduate/graduate student lab, The Wellbeing Lab, works on supporting out-of-school programs that build self-efficacy, support identity development, and foster positive youth development.
Did you do research as an undergraduate student? How did you get started in your current field?
No, I did not participate in research as an undergraduate student. I got started in the field of adolescent development via my work as a teacher in alternative and traditional middle and high schools. The traditional school system often fails to meet the needs of our most vulnerable students-low income students with identities that are marginalized in the community who also faced trauma in their childhoods. I was driven to design programming that could provide out-of-school and in-school supports. My first full research study was completed in my Master's of Education program, a study on restorative justice and nature-based learning that became my first published research book. That gave me some confidence to later get my PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison. I got started in the field due to a passionate commitment to improving the lives of vulnerable teens.
Who are some of your most memorable mentors? How did you meet them?
One of my most memorable mentors is Lori DiPrete Brown from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Global Health and 4W (Women and Wellbeing in Wisconsin and the World). She supported my interest in wellbeing education, she always believed in my capabilities and was a model for engaging in rich and reciprocal ways with communities international and locally. She conducted research ethically and taught me a variety of skills for engaging with vulnerable children and adolescents. My local mentor is Dr. Ellen Beck her at UC San Diego. I met Dr. Beck when I was a ChangeMaker Faculty Fellow. She could tell that I needed support adjusting to academia as it was very different from being in a school community. She assured me that compassion and empathy belonged in higher education and met with me monthly to provide support, encouragement, and mindfulness resources to support my own health and wellbeing. I transfer those activities to my own mentees here and work to ensure that all students know they have my support and care. Chris Halter is my mentor in Education Studies and is always available to talk something through. He is a great listener and then shares ideas and solutions. I appreciate all these mentors in different ways!
Why do you enjoy being a mentor?
I love meeting with students to help plan and develop their goals. It's amazing to see my mentees take on large and small challenges, such as overcoming fears of public speaking, to conducting their own research studies. I love creating equitable lab space so that students can also see that their ideas and analysis is just as important to our process as my own ideas are. Designing spaces that nurture community in research is an important value to me and my mentees work within our research partnerships here and in Uganda (largely via Zoom). My undergraduate research team is quite amazing and my community partners LOVE the energy and ideas that they bring to their nonprofits and NGOs. Finally, I enjoy supporting them through graduate school applications, letters of recommendations, reference calls, and the joy of learning that they got admitted into programs that they are passionate about. Keeping in touch with them long after graduation is something that I enjoy--the fact that they reach out to share news about their lives is beautiful.
What is the most useful piece of advice a mentor gave you?
To work with humility and curiosity and to engage with communities and students with authenticity and joy.