Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences

Position
The School of Social and Behavioral Health Sciences in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University (OSU) invites applications for an Assistant Professor in Human Development and Family Sciences (HDFS) who will contribute to our emphasis on family science. This position is a full-time (1.00 FTE), 9-mo. tenure-track appointment located in Corvallis, Oregon.

Qualifications
Required qualifications include a doctoral degree (PhD) in HDFS, family science, sociology, psychology, demography, or related social science field by start of employment. The successful candidates will demonstrate potential for a strong program of research, securing external funds, effective teaching, and service to the profession. We are especially interested in candidates with expertise in family policy, family demography, family mental health, intergenerational relationships, or family transitions. Successful candidates will also have strong expertise using quantitative or qualitative research methods. Preferred qualifications include a minimum of 1 year of relevant post-doctoral experience; experience in collaborative interdisciplinary research as demonstrated by publication record, research projects, or previous positions; evidence of effective communication skills; and a demonstrable commitment to promoting and enhancing diversity. (Please note that marriage and family therapy are not included in the scope of the program.)

Responsibilities
Responsibilities include establishing an independent research program through external funding, and advancing the college’s research agenda in the area of family well-being; teaching undergraduate and graduate courses; mentoring graduate students; providing service to the HDFS program, college, university, and profession.

Application Procedures
To apply, visit https://jobs.oregonstate.edu/ and search for Posting P01738UF. Please create a profile and submit your cover letter/ CV. To ensure first consideration, applications should be received by January 8, 2018. Appointment can begin September 17, 2018.

Questions regarding the position should be directed to Dr. Kate MacTavish, Associate Professor and Search Chair, email kate.mactavish@oregonstate.edu; ph 541-737-9130. Address questions about the application to: Kaycee Headley, Administrative Assistant to School Heads, School of Social & Behavioral Health Sciences, email Kaycee.Headley@oregonstate.edu; ph 541-737-4765.

2018 NIA Postdoctoral Fellowship

The Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan expects to have an opening for a postdoctoral fellow, sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (NIA). This position will start on or about September 1, 2018. Applicants must have a PhD in demography, public health, or one of the social sciences (e.g., sociology, economics, psychology) by the starting date.

Applicants for the NIA position do not need to have a background in aging research (although it is desirable), however they must propose an aging-related research project which focuses on the health of the elderly or near-elderly population as part of their application.

Selection will be based on scholarly potential and compatibility with the interests of a faculty mentor. When considering applicants we will take into consideration current NIH guidelines with respect to the scope of the research the Institute supports. The NIH guidelines can be viewed here:

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-16-025.html

Fellows devote most of their time to independent research, but may also take selected courses and/or teach on a light-load basis. Positions offer exceptional opportunity for collaboration with staff of the Population Studies Center and Survey Research Center on major projects in the U.S. and overseas.

Term of appointment will be for two years, contingent on continued funding. Stipend will be commensurate with experience, based on levels mandated by NIH. Fellowships sponsored by NIA are funded by the Federal government and are therefore restricted to U.S. Citizens and Permanent Residents. Applicants must be Citizens or Permanent Residents of the United States at the time of application.

Screening of applications will continue until the position is filled, with full consideration being given to those applications that are complete as of January 8, 2018.

The following application materials are required:

Letter of application
Curriculum vitae (which must include citizenship status on the first page)
1-2 page statement of research interests detailing your planned research while at PSC
Examples of written work
Also, please arrange for three letters of recommendation to be sent directly from the author to the email address below by January 8, 2018.

All application materials should be sent to: PSCPostdoctoralRecruitment@umich.edu

Applications are not considered complete until recommendation letters are received. All documents should be in PDF format and contain the applicant’s last name in the file name.

Assistant Professors, Department of Policy Analysis and Management

The Department of Policy Analysis and Management in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University is seeking to hire two Assistant Professors, one in Health and one in Applied Microeconomics. These tenure-track positions will have responsibilities of 50% research and 50% teaching and advising. The Health hire will conduct empirical research in health economics and/or health disparities. The Applied Microeconomics hire will conduct empirical research in one or more of the following areas: behavioral economics, development, economic demography, education, health, law and economics, environmental economics, labor economics, public finance, and regulation. Teaching and advising responsibilities will include support of an undergraduate major in Policy Analysis and Management, professional master’s students, and PhD programs in Policy Analysis and Management, Economics, and Sociology.

This position is in an applied multidisciplinary department with research interests in the areas of health policy, social policy and regulatory policy, with faculty members drawn from economics, sociology, public policy and other disciplines. The research environment offers ample opportunity for faculty cooperation and interactions, both within the department and across the university.

Qualifications: A PhD in economics, public policy, sociology, public health, or other appropriate field is required.

Application Process: To apply, please submit a curriculum vitae, a sample of research, and three letters of recommendation through https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/9983. Please contact the Search Committee Chair, Sean Nicholson (sean.nicholson@cornell.edu), with any questions. Cover letters can be addressed to: Rosemary Avery, Department Chair, Department of Policy Analysis and Management, 2301G MVR Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-4401.

We will begin reviewing applications immediately and will continue to accept applications until the position is filled.

Bio-Social PhD & Postdoctoral Training Program

From Biological to Social Processes: Interdisciplinary Training in Life Course Research
A New NICHD Funded Training Program at the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

We are soliciting applications for a new Bio-Social training program that aims to promote and support interdisciplinary training of PhD students and Post-doctoral scholars from both the social sciences and biological/health sciences. The goal of this new and innovative training program is to produce scientists who will conduct truly integrative work that will address some of the most pressing health problems nationally and internationally. Trainees will have the opportunity to receive interdisciplinary mentorship and training in a wide array of content areas, ranging from social inequalities to biological processes. Trainees will enter from their respective disciplines and will identify a co-preceptor team comprised of a mentor from their home discipline and another representing their new interdisciplinary interest area from among the current training faculty.

Requirements: Predoctoral trainees must be at least in their 2nd year (or transitioning to) of their academic program. Students from any academic program are eligible to apply. Postdoctoral trainees must have received their PhD degree before the start date of the traineeship. Graduates from any academic program are eligible to apply.

The application deadline has been extended to January 10, 2018. The start date of this program has changed. Start dates include April 2018 or August 2018.

More information and our application can be accessed from the following website: https://www.cpc.unc.edu/training/biosocial-science-training-program/

Lead PIs: Drs. Allison Aiello (Epidemiology) and Robert Hummer (Sociology)

Questions? Please contact: Sommer Barnes: sommer_barnes@unc.edu

UC Berkeley Social Networks Study Conference

We welcome proposals for original research analyzing Wave 1 of the UCNets data. UCNets is the University of California Berkeley Social Networks Study, a longitudinal study funded by the National Institute on Aging (R01 AG041955-01), with Claude Fischer as Principal Investigator. The objective of the UCNets study is to understand how network composition changes over time as a result of life course transitions – e.g., graduation, marriage, retirement or widowhood – and how these changes are related to health status and outcomes. Research will be presented in a conference and workshop in June 14-15, 2018. Travel and lodging for invited speakers will be paid by the conference. The first day of the event will be a conference featuring the research presentations, and the second will be a workshop on using the UCNets data.

Proposals will be judged for contribution to theory and substantive topic, and commitment to presenting a solid research result for the conference. Proposals should be about 4 pages long, and propose a research topic, background and theory, hypotheses, operationalization and method. Please include full contact information. The deadline for proposals is December 15, 2017, and should be sent to Dr. Leora Lawton, UCNets director, llawton@berkeley.edu. Requests for data and other questions are also to be addressed to her. The survey instrument and codebook can be downloaded from the project website ((http://ucnets.berkeley.edu). Decisions will be announced by January 1, 2018. Please visit the website for more information.

Betty Bekemeier Develops Model to Guide Public Health Service Data Collection and Assessment

In a recent article, affiliate Betty Bekemeier, Professor in the Department of Nursing, seeks to help bridge the gap in understanding between provision of public health services and their outcomes at the state and local level. In the article, published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Bekemeier and her co-author discuss the model they developed—with the aid of practice partners—to guide the creation of standardized systems for collecting data on preventative health services and assessing their reach and performance. The first of its kind, the model will help to shape efforts to measure and track local health department services, along with their effects on state and community health. The full article is available below.

Call for CSDE Predoctoral Fellowship Applications

CSDE’s fellowship program supports and prepares promising early researchers for careers that will have a significant impact on the field of demography. Each year, CSDE awards several distinguished fellowships for predoctoral funding and additional mentoring.

CSDE is pleased to offer two 12-month fellowships supported by the Shanahan Foundation that begin mid-September 2018.

What This Award Provides

CSDE fellowships are highly regarded awards among population and health scientists. The expectation is that subsequent to their awards, fellows will be well placed in their professional careers to make significant contributions in population science. Fellowship recipients receive a monthly stipend at the NIH Predoctoral level and a $500 travel grant. Tuition (including the Operating Fee and Building Fee), and health insurance premiums are covered. Fellows have access to CSDE’s significant support services (computing aid, research consultations, workshops, lab equipment, and more). CSDE Faculty Affiliates closely collaborate with Fellows on research, and provide one-on-one mentoring and mentoring in small faculty-led workshops. CSDE funds the visits of renowned scholars invited by Fellows to engage in the Fellows’ research.

Eligibility

CSDE fellowships are only available to students in the eight departments listed in the call. These departments have MOUs with CSDE that indicate a commitment from their graduate program to support training in population science through both core courses and mentoring from distinguished faculty at the intersection of your discipline and population science.

CSDE’s success in obtaining NIH institutional training grants in the future depends on its ability to select fellows who will make a significant impact on population science and fellows who will enhance the diversity of the demography-related research workforce. Competitive applicants are those who have demonstrated considerable potential to become productive independent researchers in demography. CSDE encourages applications from students who are members of a sub-population underrepresented in biomedical and behavioral research.

Deadline

Students have until Monday, December 4, 2017 (by 5 PM) to complete the online component of the application, and submit a copy of the online component along with the rest of their application materials to their graduate program administrator. The Department should upload the files no later than Friday, December 22, 2017 (by 5 PM).

Application Instructions

The “Call for Applications” as well as the CSDE fellowship application website provides detailed information about the application process.

Please contact Aimée Dechter (dechter@uw.edu), Assistant Director of Training, with any questions about the fellowship or application.

Fertility Decline in Africa: Are the Determinants Different?

John Casterline, Department of Sociology, Ohio State University

Variants of an “African exceptionalism” argument are now common in the discourse on African fertility decline. In a recent contribution, Bongaarts (2017) presents evidence of an “Africa effect” — fertility rates on average one birth higher than in other regions conditional on conventional demographic and socioeconomic factors. In this presentation, John investigates the empirical basis for this claim via country-level regression analysis of annual data for the period 1950 – 2015. Two propositions are examined: (i) Fertility declines in Africa started at lower levels of development than declines in other regions. (ii) Fertility in Africa exceeds what is expected given values of conventional development indicators. Both propositions are rejected. As fertility decline unfolds in Africa, its alignment with socioeconomic development roughly conforms to the historical experience in other regions, especially Asia.

Training Spotlight: Connor Gilroy, Adrian Raftery, and Emilio Zagheni Lead Workshops at International Population Conference

At the 2017 International Population Conference (IPC)–held in Cape Town, South Africa, from October 29 to November 4–the IUSSP Scientific Panel on Big Data and Population Processes hosted three preconference workshops on demography and the Data Revolution. Of these, one was led by affiliate Adrian Raftery, and another by affiliate Emilio Zagheni and CSDE Fellow Connor Gilroy.

Raftery, Professor of Statistics and Sociology, led a two-day workshop on Bayesian Population Projections: Theory and Practice along with Hana Ševčíková, Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Statistics and Social Sciences. The workshop combined lectures on Bayesian statistics with hands-on lab activities using R packages such as bayesLife and bayesPop. These probabilistic methods have been officially adopted by the UN Population Division for population projections. Because of this, it is particularly significant that this workshop was convened in tandem with the first IPC to be held in sub-Saharan Africa, where the majority of the world’s population growth is projected to occur. Accordingly, African researchers, who may have had fewer opportunities to learn these cutting-edge methodologies previously, were well-represented among the participants.

Zagheni, Associate Professor of Sociology and CSDE Training Director, and Gilroy led a daylong workshop on Social Media, Big Data and Digital Demography. This workshop covered technical subjects such as web APIs and OAuth credentialing, as well as examples of current demographic research using digital methods. Over the course of the day, participants moved from retrieving conventional Census data with programmatic web methods, to using these same techniques to access streaming and search data from Twitter and advertising data from Facebook. Additional modules focused on transforming and visualizing the data thus obtained. Participants in this workshop were diverse, and their goals for using digital trace data for demography were equally so, from investigating women’s responses to domestic violence on Twitter in France, to observing reactions to the work of nonprofits on Facebook in India.

The code and lecture slides for the digital demography workshop are available in their entirety on GitHub, at https://github.com/CSDE-UW/IUSSP-digital-demog-2017. This resource has already begun to circulate among demographers—via Twitter, naturally.

Postdoctoral Fellowships, Center for Health Outcomes and Population Equity

The University of Utah Center for Health Outcomes and Population Equity (Center for HOPE) is accepting applications for Postdoctoral Fellowships in Health Inequities (2-3 year appointments). Foci include health inequities, behavioral risk factors, and use of state of the science mobile health technologies for both assessment and intervention. Special populations of interest include Latinos, American Indians/Alaska Natives, African Americans, LGBTQ+, low socioeconomic status individuals, and rural populations. Fellows will have the opportunity to participate in several NIH-funded intervention, mechanism, and dissemination/implementation studies. Treatment approaches include smartphone apps, motivational enhancement therapies, mindfulness meditation, and cognitive behavioral interventions. Assessment approaches include on-body human sensing technologies and ecological momentary assessments. In addition to participation in numerous local projects, Fellows have the opportunity to participate in MD2K (md2k.org), a NIH-funded Big Data to Knowledge Center of Excellence that is focused on mobile health and on-body human sensing technologies.

The program is designed to prepare Fellows for independent academic research careers. Fellows will have numerous publication and grant-writing opportunities, and will share in authorship and investigator status in a manner commensurate with their effort and responsibilities. For interested candidates, there are outstanding opportunities for developing quantitative analysis and statistical expertise via workshops, courses, and with our collaborators across campus. Salary is extremely competitive with excellent fringe benefits.

The Center for HOPE provides unusually rich opportunities in community-based and clinical research. Fellows will be mentored by Drs. David Wetter and Cho Lam. The mentoring team has an exceptional track record of helping fellows obtain independent funding as principal investigators of NIH funded K and R01 awards.

Qualifications include a doctoral degree in psychology, public health, or other relevant social or population science. Applications will be reviewed as they are received. Applicants from underrepresented groups are especially encouraged to apply.

Applicants should submit their application at https://employment.utah.edu/salt-lake-city-ut/post-doc-res-assoc-wret/845DDDC2BF3946528A81B8B7216C49FE/job/. Applicants should include the following in their application:

Cover letter describing their research interests in health inequities and their research experience;
Curriculum Vitae