Bulock, Laurie Ph.D.

Dr. Laurie Bulock began her professional career in the field of alcohol and other drug prevention, where she developed a passion for working with individuals, families and communities on prevention related issues. Through her experiences she developed expertise in statewide program coordination and the importance of community and agency collaboration for building capacities to address risk and prevention.

She joined a multi-state research team as a research assistant and the project was titled Rural Families Speak, and its purpose was to study the challenges and complexities faced by rural low-income families within the context of their communities. Dr. Bulock worked with the project from 2003-2008, utilizing data from the project for her Master’s thesis and Doctoral dissertation. Her dissertation, titled, Theorizing about resilience and its relationship to depression among rural low-income mothers: Mixed methods approaches, analyzed the complex longitudinal patterns of depression among the rural low-income women in the study. The quantitative components organized the women into six longitudinal depression patterns, and analyzed how risk and resilience factors were associated with each depression pattern. The qualitative components provided rich detail about the pictures of resilience expressed within the lives of the women in the sample.

Currently Dr. Bulock teaches undergraduate students who are new to the Human Development and Family Studies major, and also teaches various graduate courses, both face-to-face and online. She enjoys developing relationships with students to encourage and prepare them for their careers and for life after college.

When not teaching, Dr. Bulock loves bon fires in her back yard and camping with her family