Manning wins BGSU's Olscamp Research Award

BOWLING GREEN, O.—Receipt of a $4.35 million federal grant to establish the National Center for Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University is just the latest research-related success for sociologist Dr. Wendy Manning, winner of this year's BGSU Olscamp Research Award.

Manning is co-director of the new center with Dr. Susan Brown, an associate professor of sociology, who nominated her colleague for the honor. With the award come a $2,000 cash prize and a reserved parking spot for a year.

“Professor Manning's scholarly productivity is truly exceptional,” wrote Brown in her nomination letter, citing publication of articles in top journals and continuous external funding for Manning's work. “A nationally recognized demographer, she has made several significant contributions to knowledge about contemporary families, particularly in the areas of fertility and family structure,” Brown added.

Manning describes herself as a family demographer who focuses on adult and adolescent relationships, with research interests in family sociology, social demography and the life course. “I primarily focus on families and relationships that exist outside the boundaries of marriage, including cohabitation, adolescent dating, unmarried childbearing, divorce and nonresident parenting,” she notes in a research statement.

In 2000, Manning founded BGSU's Center for Family and Demographic Research (CFDR), an interdisciplinary population center, and in 2002, she obtained three years of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for the center through the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

Two years ago, in what Brown termed perhaps Manning's “most significant research accomplishment,” she gained an additional five years of federal support—about $1.4 million worth—for the center through an NICHD mechanism that funds only 15 population centers nationwide. The other 14 centers are all at institutions classified as Research-I, she explained.

“Manning's success at competing with well-established centers at larger universities is a testament to her national reputation,” according to Brown. “Indeed, her research record and scholarly standing were critical to BGSU's success in obtaining significant federal funding from NIH for CFDR.”

Manning's willingness to pursue funding for the center, as its director, “is evidence of her generosity to her colleagues and students as well as to BGSU as an institution,” noted Brown, CFDR's associate director.

The center has 41 faculty affiliates from several campus departments, she wrote, and Manning, who also won BGSU's Faculty Mentor Award in 2005, spends “countless hours” facilitating faculty research, grant activity and training. For example, she pointed out, Manning offers faculty development awards that provide extensive mentoring to faculty as they generate their first grant proposal. She's also heavily involved in informal mentoring; trains several graduate students each year, giving many an opportunity to participate in high-quality research projects, and oversees several scholarship of engagement projects, among her other efforts at the center cited by Brown.

“Your efforts to mentor new faculty and to collaborate with your colleagues are recognized throughout the University,” said Dr. Heinz Bulmahn, vice provost for research and Graduate College dean, in a congratulatory letter to the award-winner. “Your work extends beyond the University and reaches well into the community, truly ‘expanding the reach.'”

Supporting Manning's nomination, Dr. Gary Lee, a professor and chair of the sociology department, described her “tangible assistance and inspiration to her colleagues” as her “greatest contribution.” Wrote Lee: “She has made everyone around her better.”

Since 2004, Brown added, Manning has been elected to leadership positions in several prominent national organizations in her field, including the Association of Population Centers and the Population Association of America; published 14 articles in refereed journals, and was first author of half of them; authored 15 paper presentations; made five invited presentations, and successfully competed for individual research grants. “Over the past three years, Professor Manning has skillfully juggled eight grants, on five of which she was the principal investigator! This level of productivity is simply amazing,” Brown maintained, calling her colleague “in a class by herself.”

“She has been amazingly successful on every dimension of performance as a researcher,” agreed Lee, saying that Manning “has made, and continues to make, a huge mark on the literature of our field. I know of no one else in the country with this kind of publication record.”

“She is without doubt the most accomplished scholar for her career stage with whom I have worked, and one of the leading scholars in the country in her discipline,” he asserted. “We would not be the department or university we are today without her.”

In her research statement, Manning says social trends reflect a movement toward greater recognition and acceptance of nonmarital families “that still represent ‘incomplete institutions' but are clearly important emerging institutions that deserve additional research scrutiny.

“I hope my work will make substantive contributions to our knowledge about how family members define and understand their obligations to each other in an era of increasing diversity and complexity of family relationships.”

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(Posted November 07, 2007 )