It is with distinct pleasure that the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) announces Chalandra M. Bryant, Ph.D., CFLE, as the 2024 recipient of the Ernest W. Burgess Award, which acknowledges the achievements of an NCFR member in their outstanding impact and commitment to the study of families. The recipient is selected by NCFR’s Research and Theory Section in recognition of continuous and meritorious contributions to the area of theory and research in the family field.

Ernest W. Burgess, the namesake of this award, co-founded NCFR and was the organization's fourth president. He was a pioneer in his contributions to marriage and family research.

Dr. Bryant, NCFR Fellow, is a full professor, Pauline Boss Faculty Fellow in Ambiguous Loss, and director of research in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Bryant’s research focuses on marital relationships of African Americans and the manner in which
stressors impact those relationships. One of her funded projects involved collecting longitudinal data from 700 newly married African American couples. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) invited Dr. Bryant to present that research as part of its Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Lecture Series. Through a very competitive process, she was selected by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to join the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences as a Visiting Scientist. During her two-year rotation at NSF, she served as a Program Director for the Developmental Sciences Program.

Dr. Bryant has written numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters. She has also co-authored a book about family stress with Drs. Pauline Boss and the late Jay Mancini. She has given over 170 presentations at national, international, and local venues.

Dr. Chalandra Bryant was named NCFR Fellow in 2023, and has received numerous awards and honors from NCFR, including Marie F. Peters Award, Social Justice Award for Contributions to Family Science Bryant's, and Felix Berardo Award for Mentoring. Dr. Bryant's service to NCFR includes annual conference presentations, ad-hoc reviewer for conference proposals, webinar presenter, publishing in the Journal of Family Theory & Review, CFLE Network, and NCFR Report, a member of both the Research and Theory Section and the Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Families Section, past chair of the Inclusion and Diversity Committee, as well as previous editorial board member of the Journal of Family Theory & Review and the Journal of Marriage and Family, and ad-hoc reviewer for the Journal of Marriage and Family.

In the letter of nomination, Dr. Pauline Boss retorts that, "Dr. Bryant has made major contributions to family science regarding the assessment of measures—that is, whether measures used are culturally sensitive and appropriate for the population being studied. In addition to being an outstanding researcher and theoretician in our field, Dr. Bryant is an outstanding educator and speaker. She has a way of making complex research findings accessible to a variety of audiences, thus getting updates and new knowledge out to various disciplines of research and practice."

Dr. Bryant will be recognized for her achievement during a plenary at the 2024 NCFR Annual Conference where she will give a special address titled, "Contextualizing the Lived Experiences
of Black Americans."

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.