Two Human Ecology Department faculty win National Council on Family Relations awards

October 5, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas—Two faculty from the Department of Human Ecology at The University of Texas at Austin have been given highly coveted awards by the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR).

Dr. Ted Huston, the Amy Johnson McLaughlin Centennial Professor in the Division of Human Development and Family Sciences, will receive the Ernest Burgess Award at the council’s annual meeting in Minneapolis this November. The Burgess award is a lifetime career award given every other year to a scholar with a record of distinguished contributions to family studies.

Dr. Aletha Huston, the Priscilla Pond Flawn Professor in the Division of Human Development and Family Sciences, will also be honored at the council’s annual meeting with the Reuben Hill Award for the article, “Mothers’ time with infant and time in employment as predictors of mother-child relationships and children’s early development,” which was published in the journal Child Development. The award is presented annually to the author(s) of the most outstanding research article in a family journal the year prior to the award.

Ted Huston’s research focuses on how and why intimate relationships change over time. Using data drawn from a 15-year longitudinal study funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Mental Health, his research has examined the role of disillusionment in divorce, the connection between problems that surface during courtship and later marital distress, the impact of parenthood on marriage, gender differences in interpersonal styles and marital roles. 

Aletha Huston specializes in understanding the effects of poverty on children and the impact of childcare and income support policies on children's development. She is a pioneer in furthering research and knowledge on the effects of electronic media on children's social development and academic achievement.

For more information on Ted Huston’s research, visit the Processes of Adaptation in Intimate Relationships Project (PAIR).

For more information on Aletha Huston’s research, visit the Center for Research on Interactive Technology, Television and Children (CRITC) or the Population Research Center.

For more information contact: Lee Clippard, media relations, College of Natural Sciences, 512-232-0675.