Certified Family Life Educator (CFLE) Emeritus status has been awarded to retired CFLEs Marilyn J. Flick, Dana R. McDermott, and Sherod Miller, in recognition of their significant contributions to the field of Family Life Education.

Find out more about CFLE Emeritus status.
 

Marilyn J. Flick, M.S., CFLE, was chair of the Applied and Fine Arts/PE/Health Department, and a longtime teacher at North Eugene High School in Eugene, Oregon. She served there for 31 years until her retirement in 2016. She taught a variety of courses, including human sexuality, infant development, independent living, food and fitness, teen health, and more. She has been interviewed on radio and television and given more than 30 community presentations on teaching children about sex. In addition to more than a dozen NCFR presentations, she has given presentations on teaching at several other state and national conferences.

As an NCFR member, Ms. Flick initiated a Teaching Technique Exchange in 1983 that continued for five years. At the NCFR conference, she has offered several teaching roundtables and presented on several panels on Family Life Education and sexuality education. She has served in numerous committee and leadership positions within NCFR, including three terms of service on the NCFR Board of Directors. In 2015, Ms. Flick was awarded the Ernest G. Osborne Award, which is given to an NCFR member who has excelled in teaching Family Science and providing service to families through teaching.

“Because of her ability to disseminate knowledge in a nonintimidating and interesting way, students lined up to take her classes,” writes Kara Walter, a former student who was inspired by Ms. Flick to become a family and consumer sciences teacher. “To this day she continues to provide a safe and thoughtful environment while teaching about families and relationships.”

Dana R. McDermott, Ph.D., CFLE, was an associate professor at the School of New Learning at DePaul University (2002-2014), where she designed and taught graduate and undergraduate courses in parenting education. Previously, she served as an instructor in the Department of Psychology at Loyola University of Chicago (1975-1999), where she also earned her Ph.D. in developmental psychology.

Dr. McDermott has made contributions to the CFLE program. She has been a presenter for NCFR, the American Orthopsychiatric Association, and many other parenting education conferences, with an emphasis on providing professional development materials. Her book, Developing Caring Relationships Among Parents, Children, Schools and Communities (Sage, 2008) was written with CFLEs in mind and was the result of traveling around the United States, and to Russia and Australia to work with parent educators.

Dr. McDermott has worked to help found and sustain many organizations dedicated to the professional development of parent educators, including the National Parenting Education Network (NPEN), where she currently serves as chair of their nominating committee; Prepare Tomorrow’s Parents; the Center for Parent Growth and Development at the Latin School of Chicago; and a support group for parent educators from organizations in Chicago, New Orleans, and Clayton, Missouri.

She has received grants for research projects to support the work of Family Life Educators, including a current focus group of parents with K-12 children designed to ascertain their parent education needs. Dr. McDermott continues to write book chapters on parenting, and articles for CFLE Network.

Sherod Miller, Ph.D., CFLE, a family sociologist and social psychologist, is CEO of Interpersonal Communication Programs, Inc. He focuses his efforts on developing training programs and the accompanying materials. Most notable is the revised Couple Communication program and the Core Communication and Collaborative Team Skill programs. He conducts instructor training workshops across the United States for professionals who in turn teach the programs. Nearly 1.5 million people have participated in the family and business communication programs that Dr. Miller has developed.

Dr. Miller has co-authored Alive and Aware, Straight Talk, Working Together, and Connecting with Self and Others. These books have all been used as course texts for college and university classes in Family Science, applied communication, and counseling psychology.

Dr. Miller earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Minnesota. He has been a clinician in marriage and family therapy and a faculty member in the Department of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. He is a fellow of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and the recipient of many awards recognizing his work in marriage and family therapy. He was the inaugural co-recipient of the NCFR Student of the Year Award with his colleague Elam Nunnally.

Dr. Miller's workbooks and materials in the Couple Communication program have been adopted by over 350 college and university marriage and family courses, have been translated into 12 languages, and have generated over 70 other related independent research studies.