Background
On September 25, 2007 the Department announced a cooperative agreement to establish the first-ever National Center for Marriage Research, now known as the National Center for Family and Marriage Research (NCFMR), to improve our understanding of how marriage and family structure affect the health and well-being of individuals, families, children, and communities, and to inform policy development and programmatic responses. The awardee for the national center is the Bowling Green State University NCFMR.
The Center pursues an ambitious vision to build a new capacity for family research by providing intellectual leadership using an innovative, cross-cutting approach that integrates sociological, psychological, developmental, economic, and demographic perspectives to:
- Address key research questions on the relationship between family structure and adult and child wellbeing, the role of family processes and resources, the formation and maintenance of healthy marriages, adolescents' transitions into healthy marriage in adulthood, pathways to family formation outside of marriage, comparisons between married and unmarried families, and the roles of marriage and relationship skills education programs (including faith-based organizations);
- Establish a strong network of multi-disciplinary scholars who focus their research on families by conducting seminars and conferences, running small grants competitions, and developing visiting scholar and postdoctoral programs;
- Develop and train future researchers whose work explores questions of family structure and function by mentoring junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate assistants.
- Improve research methods and data to permit a fuller understanding of the effects of family structure in various domains across the life span by producing marriage and family structure measurement guidelines, piloting survey data, developing databases of marriage and divorce data, and organizing data workshops; and
- Actively disseminate research findings through a dedicated web site, research briefs, conference proceedings, news releases, and targeted e-mail to the policy and research communities as well as program practitioners. The Center coordinates with the Administration for Children and Families' Healthy Marriage Resource Center, particularly around communication with marriage and family strengthening program practitioners.
To learn more about the Center and its current activities, please visit: http://ncfmr.bgsu.edu.
Current Opportunities
Visiting Scholars Program
The National Center for Family and Marriage Research (NCFMR) invites applications from faculty and researchers for our Visiting Scholars program. The NCFMR is able to offer office space, computing support, and opportunities to participate in NCFMR seminars and activities on the BGSU campus for up to 2 scholars. Unfortunately, the NCFMR does not have funds available to support salary, travel, or research expenses for visiting scholars. Scholars are invited to visit for a variety of lengths of time, ranging from an academic year, semester, summer, or one month.
Visiting Scholars from a range of social science disciplines (e.g., demography, economics, history, human development, psychology, and sociology) are encouraged to apply. The NCFMR is especially interested in hosting scholars conducting work in one or more of its research themes.
Please see http://ncfmr.bgsu.edu/ for further information.