Jensen Receives Graduate Teaching Award

March 20, 2003
University Park, Pa. – Leif I. Jensen, professor of rural sociology and demography and director of the Population Research Institute, is the recipient of the Graduate Faculty Teaching Award.

            The Graduate Faculty Teaching Award, established in 1992 by the Graduate School, is given to faculty members to recognize their outstanding teaching performance and for their advising of doctoral students.

            Jensen is a well-published scholar in the areas of rural poverty, social inequality, the changing labor force and international economic development. At the same time, he has proven a dedicated, creative teacher and devoted mentor to graduates students. For eight years, he coordinated the graduate program in rural sociology, helping it to maintain and enhance its national recognition. He has served on no fewer than 40 PhD and 8 Masters committees during the last six years.

            With funding from the Ford Foundation, Jensen and colleagues worked in Nepal to establish a new academic program in human and natural resources at Katmandu University. He also served as co-director of a grant from the Ford Foundation for training students from several Latin American nations as they worked on a project examining children's schooling and labor force participation in that region. He recently administered an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant that funded graduate student research and education in international demography at Penn State. In 2001, he received the prestigious national award for Excellence in Instruction from the Rural Sociological Society. A colleague says of him, "He is immensely popular with our majors and with students from other disciplines, not only because he is a fine person -- sympathetic and caring - but, more importantly, because he is a gifted teacher, an exemplary scholar and one who continuously works at his craft."

****

Contact:  Paul Blaum at 814-865-9481 or pab15@psu.edu