Jennifer Van Hook, professor of sociology and demography and director of the Population Research institute, recently received the Clifford C. Clogg Early Career Achievement Award at the Population Association of America’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
The Clogg award is presented biennially to mid-career scholars to "honor outstanding innovative scholarly achievements of population professionals who have attained their highest professional degree within the previous 20 years". It is one of the most prestigious awards given by the Population Association of America.
Van Hook’s nomination was supported by 21 colleagues from multiple institutions due to her long history of conducting innovative research that has led to a wide range of intellectual contributions to the field of demography. Her work captures Clogg’s legacy of using and developing cutting edge demographic methods and census and survey data to address important immigration and population health questions.
Van Hook’s work has been extensively published in top journals in her field, highly cited and continuously funded by institutions including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Van Hook’s research has been instrumental for refining estimates of the U.S. immigrant population, understanding immigrants’ assimilation into U.S. society, and documenting the health and health challenges faced by children in immigrant households.
Van Hook’s research of the U.S. immigrant population was used to estimate populations eligible for President Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive action programs. These estimates helped the federal government establish benchmarks for possible program participants, and allowed state and local coalitions of service providers to estimate the demand for services.
Along with Van Hook’s many research contributions, she is also lauded for her mentorship of students and her service record. She joined the Penn State faculty in 2007 and has served as the director of the Population Research Institute for the last five years. She also led the effort to successfully bring a Census Bureau Research Data Center to Penn State in 2013.
Currently, Van Hook serves as the treasurer for the Association of Population Centers, regularly serves on grant review panels, and is the incoming co-editor of “Demography”, the flagship journal of the discipline.
The Population Research Institute is part of the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State, fostering research that addresses critical human and social problems at the local, national, and international levels.