Jensen Named Director of the Population Research Institute
January 29, 2003
University Park, Pa. —Dr. Leif Jensen, professor of rural sociology and demography at Penn State, has been named the new director of the Population Research Institute at the University.
“Dr. Jensen will provide outstanding leadership to one of the premier research and training programs nationally in the population sciences,” noted Dr. Mark Hayward, director of the Social Science Research Institute, which includes a number of research centers such as PRI.
“He is a long-time Penn State faculty member and research associate of the Population Research Institute. Dr. Jensen’s research experience will provide important scientific leadership on key domestic and international population problems now confronting policymakers. During his time at Penn State, he has taken on a range of leadership responsibilities at all levels of the university.”
His funded research has focused on such issues as the circumstances of immigrants and their children, underemployment in rural and urban areas, the economic coping strategies of the rural poor, and children's work and schooling in Latin America. Jensen is author or co-author of more than 60 publications, and in collaboration with colleagues, he has had grant support from National Institute on Aging, Ford Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dr. Jensen also has played a key role in graduate training for PRI's dual-title Ph.D. program in demography and has taught many of PRI's demography students about poverty in the United States, the sociology of development, and the problems of children and youth in developing countries.
Jensen is editor of the Rural Studies Series published by Penn State Press. He has served in various leadership roles within the Rural Sociological Society, and earned that society’s excellence in instruction award in 2001. In 1997 Jensen was a Fulbright Scholar with the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty located at the University of Bergen, Norway.
He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin and joined the Penn State faculty in 1989.
“Throughout the years the Population Research Institute has established itself as one of the nation’s leading centers for demographic research and training. I am looking forward to working with our excellent faculty affiliates and staff in keeping Penn State at the forefront of scholarship on population problems, both domestic and international,” Jensen said.
**ssr**