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$1.3 million grant supports research center BOWLING GREEN, O.—Bowling Green State University’s Center for Family and Demographic Research may be “the new kids on the
block” of federally funded population centers, but the name is getting around the neighborhood.
According to Dr. Wendy Manning, director of the center, CFDR received its first financial support from the National Institutes
of Health (NIH) only three years ago. Since then, grant dollars earned by CFDR-affiliated faculty have doubled, to $2 million.
Now federal funding is increasing as well, thanks to a new NIH award of about $1.3 million over the next five years.
The center received high marks in “a very rigorous review process at NIH,” according to Christine Bachrach, chief of the Demographic
and Behavioral Sciences Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a component of the NIH.
She said the reviewers believed that the CFDR was “a rapidly developing center that had made enormous progress in the last
few years, and we wanted to make sure they had the support to keep going.”
One of 15 centers of its kind at U.S. universities, BGSU’s center opened in 2000 with a core group of demographers—Drs. Susan
Brown, Franklin Goza and Jennifer Van Hook, all associate professors of sociology—who came together with research ideas and
an ability to compete for grants to support them, Manning said.
Today, about 35 BGSU faculty members are affiliated with the center—most of them from several departments, including sociology
and psychology, and the human development and family studies program. The new funds will help further their efforts.
For instance, the center will be authorized to appoint a senior-level researcher in demography. Manning, a professor of sociology,
called that appointment “a great opportunity” to bring visibility to BGSU and new research on the health and well-being of
children, youth and families. The center’s four focal points for study are adolescent development and emerging adulthood;
social demography of families and households; immigration, and health, morbidity and mortality.
Virtually all of the researchers’ work is relevant to public policy, associate director Dr. Laura Sanchez said, citing ongoing
study of such issues as adolescent dating relationships, spirituality and family life, intergenerational processes relating
to crime, transitions to adulthood, cohabitation and marriage, immigrant assimilation, physical and mental health of the elderly,
and parenting.
Besides traditional research, the center’s core functions are student training, applied research and community service. It
performs the latter functions by being an Ohio State Data Center affiliate that, led by data center coordinator Kelly Balistreri,
provides census and other information for researchers and policy makers. The latest issue of the CFDR’s Ohio Population News
focuses on the state’s older population and, more specifically, its labor force participation and poverty.
For more information, visit http://www.bgsu.edu/organizations/cfdr/main.html
(Posted September 15, 2005 )
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