West Virginia University - News and Information Services
Author, parenting expert to speak at second WVU Parents Club University
West Virginia University’s Mountaineer Parents Club will welcome a nationally renowned authority on parenting to their second annual ParentsClubUniversity Saturday, March 17, in the Mountainlair.
Karen Levin Coburn will address Parents Club officers about parenting during the college years. Her most recent book, Letting Go: A Parents’ Guide to Understanding the College Years, provides parents an inside view of college life and describes students’ predictable stages of development through the college years.
Coburn has been a guest on many radio and television shows, including multiple appearances on Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CNN’s Parenting Today and National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation and Weekend Edition. She also has been a guest speaker at numerous organizations and colleges. In 1998, she spoke to educators from all over the world as a featured speaker at the annual meeting of the European Council of International Schools in Hamburg, Germany.
Originally from New Jersey, Coburn has worked as an educator for 25 years in Boston, Mass., and St. Louis, Mo. She currently serves as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Students and Associate Dean for the Freshman Transition at WashingtonUniversity in St. Louis. She is a graduate of SkidmoreCollege and earned her master’s degrees from HarvardUniversity and WashingtonUniversity. She is a licensed psychologist and a licensed professional counselor.
She and her husband Stephen have two grown children.
ParentsClubUniversity is a one-day event designed to further acquaint Mountaineer Club officers from around the country with WVU and to assist them with their officers’ duties.
President David C. Hardesty Jr. and his wife, Susan, under the umbrella of the WVU Alumni Association, created the Mountaineer Parents Club in July of 1995. Since its inception, the organization has grown to more than 8,000 families, with 66 local clubs and 14 state chairs coast-to-coast.
The goal of the Parents Club is to establish a network of parents in areas where WVU students reside. It provides student support activities and University guest speakers to connect parents with the WVU experience. Members also work together to simplify transportation and housing issues and to discuss problems common to all parents of college-age students.
Other initiatives include a toll-free Parent Helpline at 800-WVU-0096, a $1,000 scholarship awarded annually to West Virginia high school student body presidents, a newsletter for parents and a Leisure Reading Library.
Office: (304) 293-6997