The Family Therapy Section of National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) has conferred the Section's Kathleen Briggs Mentoring Award jointly to Drs. Karen and Richard Wampler of Michigan State University. This first Briggs Award recognizes the Wamplers' years of service to the fields of couple and family therapy and family studies.

Dr. Karen Wampler has been a leading figure in research and training in the areas of couple and family therapy training and couple relationships for over 30 years. She was the founding director of the University of Georgia's accredited Marriage and Family Therapy Program and first coordinator for the MFT Certificate Program jointly administered by CFD, Social Work, and Counseling.  Karen was on the faculty at Georgia for 10 years before moving to Texas Tech in 1989 where she served as program director and founding department chair for Applied and Professional Studies. She edited the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy while at Tech (2001-2004). After 18 years, she moved to Michigan State as chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (formerly, Family and Child Ecology). At Georgia, she collaborated with Dr. Charles Halverson in an NIMH-funded longitudinal project on parent-child interactions. At Texas Tech, she began a research program focused on adult attachment and couple behaviors that she has continued at Michigan State. She is author of more than 50 journal articles and 11 book chapters. She has served as dissertation advisor for 26 doctoral students at Georgia, Texas Tech, and MSU, and has mentored dozens more master's and doctoral students and junior faculty over the years. Dr. Karen Wampler is recognized for her thoughtful writings on the nature of doctoral programs and on training programs for couple and family therapists.

Dr. Richard Wampler began his academic career as a rat psychologist in 1969 at 27, following his doctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. Ten years and hundreds of rats into his career, he entered the social work program at the University of Georgia, specializing in family social work. After an internship at the Athens Family Counseling Service, he began work in mental health at the North Georgia Mental Health Center (1981-83), Central State Hospital (Developmental Disabilities Division, 1983-86, 1987-89), and returned to the Family Counseling Service for two years as agency director (1986-1988). In 1989, he began a second academic career at Texas Tech at 47. There, he taught, served as Director of the Family Therapy Clinic for a number of years, and became involved in community-based programs with high-risk children and adolescents and their families. In addition to his acerbic wit, he is known for developing and implementing individual, group, and family therapy programs for adolescents on probation or held in juvenile detention and in-home family therapy programs for Latino/a families, and for training generations of graduate student mentors who went on to become supervisors in a variety of settings. In moving to MSU in 2007, he has continued to write about and research issues of services to minorities, served as Director of the CFT Program (2008-11) and Couple and Family Therapy Clinic (2010-11), and is directing the last two of his total of 22 dissertations. He has published some 45 journal articles and made some 160 presentations at professional conferences.

The purpose of the Briggs Award is to recognize the important role that clinical and academic mentors play in Couple and Family Therapy training and research. The award is given in memory of Kathleen Briggs, long-time department chair at Oklahoma State and a beloved teacher and mentor. Her vision for the field of Couple and Family Therapy and courage in the face of illness has been an inspiration.

The National Council on Relations is the nation's premier professional association for the multidisciplinary understanding of families. NCFR has a membership of over 3500 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 .