Fabienne's career journey
Although Fabienne did not graduate from Messiah under the HDFS department, her concentration in Child Development and Family Science impacted her course of study and her career aspirations. After graduating from Messiah in 1995, Fabienne went on to get her Master's and Ph. D degrees in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Fabienne then spent time as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education from 2000-2003. Following that, Fabienne was an Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut from 2003-2006 and prior to getting tenure at NYU in 2013, Fabienne was an Assistant Professor at NYU from 2006-2013.
Working in post-secondary education
As a Professor of Early Childhood Education at a research university, Fabienne has three primary responsibilities: teaching, researching, and service. Fabienne teaches two courses each semester, engages in research projects and writing research manuscripts, and serves on committees in her department, school, university, as well as nationally, and internationally. As a program director, Fabienne has a wide range of duties and responsibilities. From the day-to-day work of supporting students as they go through their program of study, Fabienne also organizes and manages courses, communicates and collaborates with other faculty members, and works towards the 'big picture' work related to long-term planning to improve and grow programs.
Fabienne's Advice
"Create a deep and wide mentoring network. Rather than relying on a single person to be your professional guru, think of a mentoring village, wherein you turn to different people to meet different needs. No one person will have all the answers, but as you forge relationships with senior colleagues and/or professors, work on discerning their strengths and weaknesses so that you can benefit most from the former and not be impacted too deeply by the latter."