The National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) has conferred its organization's prestigious Student Award to Cassandra Kirkland, a doctoral candidate in Human Development and Family Studies at Auburn University, whose concentration is fatherhood in the African American community. 

Ms. Kirkland is passionate about fulfilling the mission of land grant institutions and utilizing a strengths-based approach to examine the fathering experiences of African American men.  Her dissertation focuses on the intergenerational transmission of fathering practices among African American men and the implications of those practices for the well-being of their children.  It is her desire to utilize the findings from her dissertation to inform her future service-oriented work with low-resource, expectant fathers.

Ms. Kirkland received a Bachelor of Science degree in Child and Family Development at the University of Georgia and a Master of Science degree in Marriage and Family Therapy at Auburn University.  During her tenure at Auburn, Ms. Kirkland coordinated the Alabama Community Healthy Marriage Initiative's (ACHMI) partnership with the Tuskegee-Macon County Head Start Program for five years, and she currently teaches the Parent Education course at Auburn University.  She strongly believes that empowering the community through programs focused on building stronger familial relationships will improve child outcomes. In the future, she hopes to help bridge the gap between child/family research and social policy.

The National Council on Family Relations is the nation's premier professional association for the multidisciplinary understanding of families. NCFR has a membership of over 3400 family researchers, practitioners and educators.  For more information on the National Council on Family Relations or its scholarly publications, contact NCFR at 1-888-781-9331 or visit its website at www.ncfr.org .