Fr. Ted Said…Cultivating Hope, Part 2: Jennifer Burke Lefever '98 M.A., '00 Ph.D.

Topic: Jennifer Burke Lefever ‘98 M.A., ‘00 Ph.D.

In his inaugural address, University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., called us to be “sustainers of hope and builders of bridges.” But in a world where optimism often feels in short supply, where do we find the inspiration to keep nurturing the good? Plant those seeds through a revitalizing experience where you can pause, exhale, and allow your spirit to blossom. Come hear this calling echo in powerful, personal stories from Notre Dame alumni and faculty who are living examples of what it means to cultivate hope—just like Fr. Ted.

 Speaker:

• Jennifer Burke Lefever ‘98 M.A., ‘00 Ph.D., Managing Director, Wilma and Peter Veldman Family Psychology Clinic, University of Notre Dame

Jennifer Burke Lefever ‘98 M.A., ‘00 Ph.D. is the managing director of the Wilma and Peter Veldman Family Psychology Clinic at the University of Notre Dame. She has over 20 years of hands-on experience in research with families. Her early research documented the developmental consequences of non-optimal parenting on children. More recent research has focused on home-based interventions and other program evaluations (e.g. bullying prevention, prison nursery). She also held a leadership position at the Shaw Center for Children and Families, supervising shared laboratories, consulting on projects, and supporting grant writing.

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Transcript

Speaker 14 0:05

Jesus put it very simply: "I was hungry and you gave me to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me to drink. I was alone and, and homeless and you took me in. I was in prison and you visited me." And then he says, "Whatever you did for one of these, my least brethren, you did it for me." And that is at the heart of, of being a Christian in our day. Out of the heart of our religion comes understanding, comes support for those who need support, uh, companionship for those who are lonely, uh, food for those who are hungry, drink for those who are thirsty, and that we do it because in doing that, we are loving God and we are serving God.

Juliana 0:51

Please welcome Jennifer Burke Lefever, who earned her Notre Dame master's degree in 1998 and her Notre Dame doctorate in 2000, and who now leads Notre Dame's new Wilma and Peter Veldman Family Psychology Clinic as its first managing director.

Glynnis Garry Bann, M.D. ’11 1:19

It's been a busy few weeks for me. A few weeks ago, I was able to move my son home from his first year at Notre Dame. Last weekend, I was down in Terre Haute, Indiana, uh, as my older son graduated from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. And then just this week, on Monday, we opened up the Velma and Family Psychology Clinic. This is a new institute at the university that we've built in the community just south of campus, and we have goals with this, with this new clinic that we are gonna do research to help us understand mental health issues. We're gonna train up the next generation of care providers, and we will also provide high-quality care to those in our community with a focus on those who may not otherwise receive care. And I sometimes just wanna pinch myself that I get to get-- I get to have this role as the make-it-happener at this new clinic because I still see myself as this poor farm kid. 'Cause I was born the youngest of 10 children, uh, on a farm in the middle of nowhere in northern Illinois. So I grew up running through cornfields with my siblings and climbing trees and playing in the creek. Uh, I even as a one-- as a young girl, I tried to nurse a runt piglet back to health after it had been smooshed by a much larger pig. And so even then, I had my eye out for the little guy. And I've been able to make my career of keeping an eye out for the most vulnerable with a focus on children in poverty. And so, uh, I've, uh- And people, uh, will ask me, "How do you keep your energy level up when you're facing these, uh, these, uh, insurmountable issues?" And I tell them that sometimes it feels a bit like you're heading out to a forest fire and you're armed with a squirt gun. And I, and I tell them, "You can cultivate hope through action and energy," and I learned this from my mother. So you can imagine a woman who is, uh, reigning in the chaos of this large family on an active farm, that she would have to have an inordinate amount of energy, and she did. And she did this all while working. She would teach catechism. She sang in the choir. She was president of my PTO. Uh, she was the one, if there was anybody who had lost a family member or was sick at church, she was bringing meals. If she knew of a neighbor who had hit hard times, she was bringing them groceries. I watched as she took care of all of my elderly relatives. And then my mother thought that she should solve the homelessness problem in the tiny town near our farm, and she brought home this, uh, young man that she had found out had been sleeping in a tent. And 14-year-old Jen was mortified at this. I was way more concerned about what that was gonna do to my image to be associated with him, rather than whether he had somewhere safe to sleep that winter And my mother would get so frustrated with me. She'd be like, "Jennifer, Jesus did not call on us to judge other people. His best friend was a prostitute." Now, that is likely a more colorful interpretation of the gospel than what you just heard from Father Ted. But it burned into my young teenage brain. And through my mother's example, I learned that you cultivate hope in others through action, that you notice when someone else is suffering, and you step in, and you do something useful. And I couldn't tell you how many times that with my large family, when we would face a, a daunting task, that we were able to make short work of it because we worked on it together. And so I brought this ethic, my big farm family ethic, to Notre Dame with me, and I've been able to help build something here shaped by the legacy of Father Ted Hesburgh. 'Cause Father Ted is the reason that we have a psych department here because when leadership was debating about whether we should have a geology department or a psychology department, our departmental lore says that Father Ted said, "People are more important than rocks." I agree, Father Ted. He was also the force behind having, uh, therapy be an area of study within our department because he had a deep understanding that if this university is gonna be a powerful means for good in this world, that we need to be serving people. And I think that we are living that out through the Velde Family Psychology Clinic. I think we are doing this in a particularly Holy Cross brother kind of a way in that we are first using our wisdom to see and then our courage to act. We use our wisdom to do research, to, uh, answer questions like, how do we best serve the most vulnerable children and families? How do we welcome marginalized people into care who may not historically felt like they were welcome there? And then we need that courage to act and serve those who need us most because you don't cultivate hope by pretending that a problem doesn't exist. You cultivate hope by walking alongside people, treating them as if they are worthy of care and knowing that your actions matter. The other way that we bring our Catholic values into our work is by recognizing the importance of family. In our culture, we often treat mental health issues as if they are an individual issue, that it's your diagnosis, it is your burden to bear. Even at a time when those, those folks who are struggling may not have the wherewithal to advocate for themselves or do what they need to do to help themselves feel better. We know that it's not an individual issue, that anytime anyone is struggling, their whole family is impacted. Everyone who loves and cares for them is impacted, and those relationships can also be a source of support and healing for that person. Now, this is a particular point of passion for me because of my experience as a mother. When one of my sons was transitioning into high school, he started to have mental health struggles. And even though I'm a psychologist, and my husband at the time was a child therapist, we still felt lost. We weren't sure how best to take care of him and keep him safe. And this was a life-altering change in perspective for me, 'cause nothing will knock you to your knees faster than when you see someone who is most precious to you in the world suffering, and you don't know how to fix it And it was quite shocking to me the lack of resources available in our community. That if you were lucky enough, you could get your child into an hour a week of therapy with a high-quality therapist, but then the next step is hospitalization, and there was nothing in between. And then there literally was nothing for us as a family. In fact, that was the most horrific part, is I often felt like I was treated as if I was the problem and that I was not a source of love and support for my son. But I think at Notre Dame and at the Belmond Family Psychology Clinic, we are able to do things a little differently, and we're able to think a little bigger. And so sometimes now that we just opened this clinic, I, I think that maybe if I was riding that elevator up to the 13th floor with Father Ted again... Uh, for those of you in the audience who are a little younger, we actually used to have to go to the library to get physical books- and papers. And psychology books were on the same floor as Father Ted's office, so I would get to ride the elevator with him on occasion. And so I think he would say to me, "Jen, don't get too comfortable. We just built you this beautiful new building. What are you gonna do with it?" And I will tell you, I'm gonna put that building into action. I'm gonna gather people to come work with me and face this mental health crisis with curiosity and compassion and no judgment. I want to get people to work collaboratively and welcome people into care so that they feel respected and cared for, and this is my work. So I'm gonna head back out to that forest fire armed with my squirt gun. And if you wanna join me, and you happen to have a squirt gun, maybe you have a shovel or a bucket or maybe a fire hose, I want you to grab them up and let's go.