The National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) is proud to recognize Hyanghee Lee, Ph.D., as the 2018 recipient of the Ruth Hathaway Jewson Award, which funds the best dissertation proposal submitted by a doctoral candidate in Family Science. Her paper is titled “Toward a Culturally Robust Measure to Assess Marital Relationships.”

Dr. Lee is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) at Colorado State University. She earned a Ph.D. in HDFS with a concentration in quantitative methods at the University of Connecticut, and her master’s in child development and family studies from Seoul National University. Her dissertation focused on creating and using a marital assessment that is culturally sensitive, as well as conceptually grounded and psychometrically sound. Additionally, she has a strong interest in translational scholarship—particularly program evaluations focusing on protective factors for at-risk youth at the individual, family, and community levels.  

In a letter nominating Dr. Lee, her adviser Ronald M. Sabatelli, Ph.D., writes that Dr. Lee “has the breadth and depth of knowledge and methodological skills that will result in her dissertation being an example of scholarship that impacts on researchers in the U.S. and countries around the world.”

Dr. Lee will be recognized for her achievement at the 2018 NCFR Annual Conference, Nov. 7-10 in San Diego, California.
 
Ruth Hathaway Jewson, the namesake of this award, was NCFR's second executive director. While working full-time at NCFR, she earned her master's and doctorate degrees, writing her dissertation in the 1970s on what was at the time a small group: "The Retired Professional Woman."

The National Council on Family Relations is the premier professional association for the multidisciplinary understanding of families. NCFR has a membership of nearly 3,000 family researchers, practitioners and educators. For more information on the National Council on Family Relations or its scholarly publications, visit the NCFR website at ncfr.org.