Signature Activities

Each year, Penn State’s Population Research Institute and Social Science Research Institute, along with departments and centers in the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Health & Human Development, hold a two-day symposium focused on a key issue facing families. Each fall, about 200 scholars and policy experts attend what is now known as the National Symposium on Family Issues to consider a theme of multidisciplinary interest.

The Family Symposium is designed to focus on topics that appeal to (and are presented by) scholars from multiple disciplines who study family issues. Nine of the top scholars in the field of family research convene to present and critique research on the focal topic, consider future directions for research, and discuss how programs and public policy can effectively improve the state of families. The event gathers distinguished researchers, young scholars, and students in diverse fields such as family studies, child development, sociology, psychology, education, economics, anthropology, and policy studies, as well as health and human service providers and policy makers.

Past symposia have focused on issues such as: emerging methods in family research, African American families, diverging destinies of families in an era of increasing inequality, transitions to adulthood, and Hispanic children in immigrant families.

Attendees include Penn State students, faculty, and alumni; students and faculty from other institutions; community, state, and national policy makers; program staff; and social service administrators. The symposium is co-funded annually by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and a number of Penn State departments and centers, including the Population Research Institute and the Social Science Research Institute.

Students are exposed to some of the most important issues in family science and become better scholars and practitioners by learning about the dimensions and complexity of problems facing families. Each symposium includes a reception designed to encourage students to network with world-renowned family scholars. Graduate students are also invited to attend a luncheon with their choice of presenters.

The 2023 symposium was organized by Jennifer Van Hook, Director of the Population Research Institute, and Valarie King, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Demography, and Human Development.

NSFI Book Series

Books based on each symposium bring the event to an even wider audience. The volumes have received favorable reviews and are used as reference works by faculty, students, and practitioners. The symposium is a landmark event each year in the ongoing study of families. It reaches a wide audience and affects the national conversation on a very important topic. View previous symposia and books.

The De Jong Lecture is supported by the Caroline M. and Gordon F. DeJong Lectureship in Social Demography Endowment. It is administered jointly by the Department of Sociology and the Population Research Institute.

Gordon F. De Jong is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Demography and Senior Scientist with Penn State’s Population Research Institute.

Caroline M. De Jong is a former middle school teacher and has been involved in numerous community, church, and university-related organizations, including the American Association of University Women, Stay-and-Play Nursery School, Presbyterian Women, and the Center County Board of Elections.

View list of De Jong Lectures since 2006

Dr. Clogg was nationally and internationally known for his work in quantitative methods and demography, particularly on the analysis of rates, standardization methods, and latent structure analysis. Contributions from friends and colleagues led to the creation of the Clifford C. Clogg Memorial Lectureship fund. The fund was endowed in 1996. Leo Goodman gave the inaugural lecture on September 27, 1996.

A native of Oberlin, Ohio, Clifford C. Clogg earned his B.A. in sociology from Ohio University in 1971, an M.A. in sociology and an M.S. in statistics in 1974, and his Ph.D. in sociology in 1977, all from the University of Chicago. He joined Penn State as an assistant professor of sociology in 1976 and rapidly moved through the ranks until he was designated a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Professor of Statistics in 1990.

Dr. Clogg wrote extensively on the statistical analysis of categorical data, covering loglinear models, cohort analysis, association models, and mobility tables. His research had received continuous funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) since 1979. Dr. Clogg served on the NSF advisory panel for the sociology program and on the NSF advisory panel for measurement, methods and statistics in the social sciences.

His honors included being named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He was elected a member of the Sociological Research Association in 1987 and received the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award from the Methodology Section of the American Sociological Association for his technical contributions to social research. He also received a Special Creativity Award from the National Science Foundation and a Significant Achievement Award from Ohio University.

Dr. Clogg provided considerable editorial service to the Journal of the American Statistical Association culminating in the coordinating and applications editorship (1989-1991). In addition, he was an active member of the American Sociological Association, the Population Association of America, and numerous other professional societies. This extraordinary level of external involvement did not keep Professor Clogg from being a key contributor to his two departments at Penn State. Besides fulfilling a double set of department duties, he supervised a total of twelve master degree students and thirteen Ph.D. students in statistics and sociology. These students now hold a variety of positions in government and academe.

Organized by the graduate students in the Dual-degree in Demography program

The Population Research Institute (PRI) Graduate Student Methodology Workshops were initiated in 1994 by Dennis Hogan, PRI Director, and Gordon De Jong, Director of the Demography Program, to enhance the breadth and depth of training in demographic methods for PRI's Dual-Title Graduate Degree students. The goals of the workshop series are to empower students to identify important methodological issues, to expand their analytical skills related to those issues, and to take responsibility for inviting noted lecturers with whom they ordinarily would not interact. In addition, the workshop gives students experience in developing and managing a scientific conference.

Previous workshop topics have included:

• Population Projections, 26th Annual Workshop, May 14, 2019
• Hard to Reach Populations, 25th Annual Workshop, May 16, 2018
• Mixed Methods, 24th Annual Workshop, May 16, 2017
• Agent-Based Modeling, 23rd Annual Workshop, May 17, 2016
• Biodemography of Exceptional Longevity, 22nd Annual Workshop, June 15, 2015

Population Health

The group’s interests are broadly in population health, approached from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Contact: Xue Zhang, xuezhang@psu.edu

Family and Gender

The Family & Gender Working Group has research interests across all aspects of family demography and gender disparities, including union formation and transitions, family inequalities (gender, race, class, etc.), and family health and wellbeing.

Contact: Johabed Olvera, jgo5096@psu.edu

Migration

The Migration Working Group is broadly focused on the process of migration and its effects on sending communities, receiving communities, and migrants and their families. The group also aims to promote interdisciplinary connections and collaborations.

Contact: Nicole Kreisberg, nqk5458@psu.edu

Climate Change and Health

The Climate Change and Health (CCH) Working Group is focused on the intersection of climate change and health, and health-related social and demographic processes (e.g., migration, fertility). This group is a part of a broader set of CCH activities that are funded by an NIH supplement to the P2C.

Contact: Asher Rosinger, axr579@psu.edu

Education and Inequality

This group is aimed at promoting research on the topic of education and inequality using population-based perspectives. 

Contact: Julia Szabo, julia.szabo@psu.edu

NIH Grant Workshop Group

NIH Grant Workshop Group This group is for PRI faculty/postdoctoral associates and external affiliates who are actively writing PDB-relevant grants to submit to NIH and other relevant institutions. Both new investigators and those with considerable grant experience are encouraged to participate.

Contact: Brian Thiede, bct11@psu.edu

SSRI Working Group on Population Aging

The Collaborative on Population Aging Disparities (CoPAD) is an SSRI-funded working group that focuses on new and growing sources of inequality among aging adults, with attention to the ways that population dynamics and life course processes interact to alter the composition of the older adult population and the landscape of population health. Population aging is increasingly diverse, and new cohorts of middle-aged adults are entering their older years with different life course exposures to social stressors and policy environments with strong implications for later life health. For instance, current cohorts of aging adults in the United States contain a rapidly increasing share of immigrants, people with a history of criminal justice system contact, and those who experienced a lifetime of precarious work conditions, among other changes, all of which position them to enter their later years with lower levels of access to private and public services like retirement income and health insurance that are key social determinants of health. Globally, ever larger cohorts exposed during their lives to increased climate pressures, wars, and natural disasters are entering older adulthood, often without the family safety nets that prior generations relied on for companionship, caregiving, and social support. CoPAD brings together researchers working on these topics in several population-based, social science fields, surfaces new methodologies and data sources of interest to scholars of aging and the lifecourse, and provides a structure that helps foster new research ideas and project directions related to population aging and disparities. 

Contact: Ashton Verdery, amv5430@psu.edu

Application Details

1. CV
2. A one-page Specific Aims page of your proposed research idea (please use 11-pt Arial font, half-inch margins), including:
   • Short description of the contribution of the research.
   • Brief description of possible data and methodology.
   • Statement of the project’s 2-3 specific aims.
   • In lieu of an impact statement, please provide 1-2 sentences to discuss fit with NICHD’s Population Dynamics Branch’s priorities and programs.

Eligibility Criteria

Applicants should be junior faculty/research scientists who qualify as Early Stage Investigators using NIH’s definition and population scientists at a research institute or university in the United States that does not have a NICHD-PDB funded population center. Visiting Scholars will be selected who have research areas aligned with PRI’s primary research areas of Population Health; Immigration, Migration, and Immigrant Integration; Families, Networks, and Social Change; and Climate Change and Health. Applicants must have a grant idea to develop that aligns with NICHD’s Population Dynamics Branch research priorities and programs.

Award Details

External Fellows will receive funding to support travel costs, meals, and hotels to travel to University Park/State College, Pennsylvania for the period of May 13-16th, 2025, where they will participate in an intensive grant-writing workshop. Activities will include developing a fundable research question, revising and workshopping specific aims, peer reviews, networking and mentoring, and all the 101 basics of applying to NICHD. After the four-day introduction to grant-writing workshop, External Fellows will continue their relationship with PRI as External Fellows/external affiliates (with all the benefits of external affiliation) for two more years. During this time, External Fellows will participate in the PRI grant-writing group as they work to develop and submit externally funded grants to NICHD’s Population Dynamics branch, will receive support from PRI’s faculty associates, and join in PRI topical area writing groups.

Application deadline: March 5th, 2025

Email applications to: Nicole Sharkey, Project Manager, nds156@psu.edu

Decision notification: March 31st, 2025

Program Runs: May 2025-May 2027