Becker Team

Who We Are

Donna Keuck Becker, MAT, PhD

In her work with college-bound students and their parents, Donna draws upon her own experiences at the full range of four-year colleges and universities in this country and at two overseas institutions of higher education.

She earned a bachelor’s degree from the experimental Callison College at the University of the Pacific (UOP). As an undergraduate, she studied at Sophia University (Jochi Daigaku) in Tokyo and Taiwan National University (Shih Fan Ta Hsueh) in Taipei.

For a master’s degree in teaching at the Benerd School of Education, UOP, Donna investigated the relationship between factual information about and the stereotyping of Asians in a group of suburban teens.

Completing a master’s degree in sociology/criminology at Ohio State University provided experiences in studying and working at one of our nation’s largest research universities. She faced different challenges after arriving on the Ivy League campus of Cornell University for doctoral study. Her dissertation emphasized visual and statistical methods for interpreting representations of East Asia.

During seven years as a faculty member at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Donna taught twelve different courses, including sociology of family, juvenile delinquency, research methods and sociology of art and culture. She advised dozens of students and worked with the residence life staff in pioneering campus safety programs.

Donna has often volunteered with children and adolescents.  Her activities range from making peanut butter toast for the kids in a San Francisco shelter for battered women and talking with runaways at a Manhattan refuge to supervising teens in an entomology program at the Phoenix Zoo. Currently, she volunteers with Days of Taste, a Baltimore-based program that connects urban fourth-graders with the delights of organic farming and balanced eating.

Committed to the healthy development of teens and emerging adults in a multicultural society, Donna is a member of the American Sociological Association, the International Visual Sociology Association and NAFSA: Association for International Educators.

She resides in a wooded corner of Baltimore County with her mother, her nephew, her husband Christopher H. Young (see below), six cats and one chinchilla.  Donna’s personal interests include kayaking, ceramic tile making and vegetarian cooking. For amusement, she reads a monthly industry publication on Alsatian viticulture, Tang poetry and shojo manga in the source languages. Her latest linguistic foray is learning German.

Christopher H. Young, PhD

Chris Young earned his doctoral degree in sociology from Cornell University in 1991. Young has published extensively in the areas of regional economics, organizational behavior and health policy. He has led research teams in both academia and business. In the roles of field supervisor and research director, he has had the opportunity to mentor dozens of individuals during their entry into the work force.

During his fifteen years of experience in staff development, Chris has learned to help emerging and mid-career professionals focus their individual talents and skills on the problems at hand. He has found that people who are able to adapt their cognitive and communicative competencies to the work environment are the ones most likely to succeed and to enjoy their careers. Central to this success are the abilities to frame appropriate questions and to interpret sophisticated forms of information.

As the senior research associate of Becker Academic, LLC, Chris applies his understanding of the processes and pitfalls of career advancement to our family workshops and topical breakfast seminars.

He and his wife, Donna Keuck Becker, met more than twenty years ago, as graduate students in the sociology department at Cornell. In his spare time, Chris enjoys hiking, kayaking, playing online chess and reading contemporary international fiction. Since moving to Maryland, he has developed the habit of reading the Sunday comics on Saturday afternoons, although he confesses his continuing bewilderment about the delivery customs of the Baltimore Sun.