U of I's Oswald wins National Council on Family Relation's Osborne Award
Published: Nov. 4, 2009
URBANA — Ramona Oswald, associate professor in the Department of Human and Community Development (HCD) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has received the Ernest G. Osborne Award for excellence in teaching from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR).
The award, given biannually, recognizes an individual from the United States or Canada who demonstrates long-term excellence in the teaching of family relationships.
The NCFR, founded in 1938, is a member-funded, nonprofit network of family professionals who encourage research and information sharing on and about families, as well as the application of knowledge to familial and societal problems.
Oswald, a teacher and professor of family studies, has given outstanding service through her excellence in the classroom, her role as Graduate Programs Director of the Department of Human and Community Development, and her work as an educator about LGBT family issues.
She is recognized as one of the leading scholars in LBGT family studies and has published numerous journal articles and book chapters in this area.
She began her education at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and completed her graduate studies at the University of Minnesota with an M.A. and Ph.D. in family social science.
She is widely known for her edited book, Lesbian Rites: Symbolic Acts and the Power of Community (2003, Haworth Press), co-authored article "Structural and Moral Commitment among Same-Sex Couples: Relationship Duration, Religiosity, and Parental Status" (2008, Journal of Family Psychology), and her co-authored chapter "Decentering Heteronormativity: A Proposal for Family Studies" in the 2005 Sourcebook of Family Theory & Research (Sage Publications). Experts in the field have described the Sourcebook as the text that will prepare a new generation of family scholars for the process of theorizing.
"Dr. Oswald's gifts as a scholar and teacher are all the more powerful because of her courageous efforts to bring scholarship that makes a difference to the discipline, the university, the profession, and to real people's lives. When I think about agents of change in the academy and in the community, Ramona Oswald comes to mind. She is as serious about her teaching as she is about her research and her service to others," said Katherine Allen, a professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
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