Dr. Tonia Bock will succeed Dr. Carol Bruess as director of the interdisciplinary Family Studies program beginning Sept. 1. Bock has been professor in the Psychology Department in the College of Arts and Sciences for 15 years, and a member of the Family Studies Advisory Board for the last 10.
Dr. Tonia Bock
Bock’s specialty is in educational and developmental psychology, both of which are integral parts of the family studies major and minor.
“[Carol] has just been such a phenomenal leader of Family Studies. I’m really excited to be part of such a dynamic and growing program,” Bock said.
Bruess has been a professor in the Communication and Journalism Department for 19 years and director of the Family Studies program for the last eight. Bruess is moving alongside her husband, who has been appointed the next president of St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, which is where the couple met in 1986 and graduated from in 1990.
Bruess said that she has no doubt that Bock will lead the Family Studies program into a new chapter of excellence at St. Thomas and on the national scene.
“Tonia is the kind of leader, the kind of colleague, you dream about when you enter academia. She’s tireless, she’s brilliant, and she’s forever kind … always acting as a venerable force ensuring what is best for students stays squarely at the center of whatever we do,” Bruess said. “Without Tonia’s support and countless contributions to our program, family studies would likely still be a small, relatively unknown minor rather than the ever-growing, popular major we have become. She believed we could and should become a major and then served as an energizing agent on the board, always focusing on making sure the family studies curriculum was highly credible as we compare to nationally recognized interdisciplinary programs in family science.”
Family Studies is currently the home to more than 50 majors and minors, many of whom double major in areas such as psychology, communication and journalism, Catholic studies, and education, among others.
To learn more about the Family Studies program, contact Bruess, Bock or visit the program’s webpage.