My name is Tuuli Kukkonen. I teach in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition
here at the University of Guelph. I did
my undergraduate degree at Concordia
University in Montreal, in Psychology, and
I did my PhD in Clinical Psychology at
McGill University in Montreal. I studied
sexual response in men and women so my
thesis worked to develop and validate a
tool to measure sexual arousal in men
and women. I suppose I've always been
interested in how individuals express
themselves as sexual beings, how
individuals understand their sexuality
and I never realized until late in my
undergrad that you could actually
study this for a living and you can
contribute to our understanding of
sexual health. I think that I've always
been a driven student so I definitely did
well throughout my study. I had always known that I wanted to go into Psychology so
for me ever since probably high sch-
you know, early high school I knew my
career path would be towards being a
psychologist, I just never knew that I
would incorporate research and teaching
into it until a little bit later and I
suppose I was fairly driven that I
enjoyed my courses, I loved, you know, I
loved psychology and that kind of
motivated me to learn more and continue
continue on into my graduate. Really when you when you graduate from a PhD and you
realize you want an academic position, I
think one thing they don't tell you is
that academic positions are few and far
between. So, initially I came to Guelph
because this was a university that was
actually looking for a sexuality
researcher and someone who would be
teaching human sexuality, which was great,
as opposed to other places where it
would be, a sort of general Psychology
Department and couched under Health
Psychology. Yeah, I think our department,
its strength lies in its multidisciplinary
culture, that we have individuals who
study a variety of different things
under the same department, so Nutrition,
we're looking at Child Youth and Family,
Adult Development through sort of old
age and it's a wonderful place where
people can all sort of come together and
learn from each other and grow with each
other as faculty and researchers. I believe
sexuality is integral to our quality of
life, that individuals, you know,
choose to express their sexuality in
different ways and certainly my hope is
that my contribution will allow us to
better understand the factors that are
really important to healthy sexuality
and healthy sexual functioning within
individual, within groups of
individuals. I mean research has shown that
sexual functioning is strongly related
to our quality of life and particularly,
you know, my interests are geared now more towards aging and sexual response and as
we have an ageing population, we also have individuals who still want to express
themselves as sexual beings, who want to continue fulfilling their lives through
sexual interaction and communication and
this is an area of research that's
really poorly studied at this point in
time and I feel, my hope is that my
research can help contribute to better
understanding and enhancing those
factors that make for healthy sexuality
as an individual ages. Really find your
passion and stick to it. I mean, there are
so many interesting things to study
out there and there's room, there's always
room for research. There's always room
for growth and for understanding of
different topics so if it seems in
undergrad that you're not quite sure
what you want, just try and find that
passion and then that will help you in
terms of finding your career path and
finding the things that bring you joy in
terms of your professional fulfilment.
I get to study what I love. That Guelph
provides an incredibly
supportive atmosphere for a researcher
to grow or a faculty to grow as both a
researcher and a teacher,  I think is
really wonderful. I love the teaching side,
just being able to interact with the
students and show the students that
potential for growth and that potential to
learn different things. It's really
rewarding to have students in class and
awaken their passion for different
topics.
