Minneapolis, MN – The National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) has conferred its organization’s prestigious Student Award to two co-recipients, Mallory Lucier-Greer of Auburn University and Amanda Williams of Oklahoma State University. This award is given to NCFR graduate student members who have demonstrated excellence as a student with high potential for contribution to the discipline of family studies.

Mallory Lucier-Greer recently completed her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies at Auburn University. During her tenure at Auburn, Dr. Lucier-Greer coordinated research efforts for the Alabama Community Healthy Marriage Initiative, instructed multiple undergraduate classes and fulfilled the requirements to become a licensed marriage and family therapist.  In the future, Dr. Lucier-Greer hopes to explore the mechanisms of couple resiliency. This work is intended to move beyond studies of couple stability to examine how personal characteristics, family factors, and broader social supports influence the trajectory of the couple relationship. 

Amanda Williams is a doctoral student at Oklahoma State University. Ms. Williams’ research focuses on young adults’ risk and resilience with emphasis on social media technology, homelessness, and health risks behaviors. During her tenure at Oklahoma State University she has been involved in a number of funded grant proposals, coordinated numerous research projects in the areas of homelessness, social media, parent education, adolescent school success and obesity. Ms. Williams intends to continue to explore risk and resilience as it relates to the use of technology by adolescents, emerging adults, and their families. As technology becomes more and more intertwined with the way we live as families, she intends to offer practical and nuanced research that makes life better for families.

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 3600 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.