2024 Lifetime Achievement Award Co-Recipient: Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth
The WFRN is delighted to recognize Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth as co-recipient of the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Nominator Stephen Sweet writes “Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth has provided important insights in understandings of work-family concerns in military careers. Many of her studies were among the first conducted of families during the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. For example, her team conducted the first nationally representative study of young children exposed to parental deployment, which revealed that boys born during deployments have significantly more peer difficulties than other boys six years later. Over her career, Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth has garnered over $80 million in funding, including sustained funding for the Military Family Research Institute, which she co-founded and directs, through approximately 100 grants for research, outreach and engagement from the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Institutes of Health, as well as state government, private philanthropic organizations, and corporations. Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth’s research portfolio is impressive, with over 120 refereed articles in leading journals, over 40 book chapters, and 10 authored or edited books.
A second overarching area of contribution is Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth’s scholarship on the links between workplace conditions and family functioning. Her research has significantly advanced knowledge about the impact of workplace characteristics, policies, and practices on workers and their families. In particular, she has studied how work environments impact worker well-being and family relationships, including relationships between spouses and between parents and children. Her prominence in the field was confirmed by her designation as one of the Top 10 Extraordinary Contributors to WorkFamily Research in the world through a research-based study.”
One of the most enduring and important contributions Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth has made to the work-family community is the highly visible recognition given to the research of other scholars, which speaks volumes to her commitment to the concerns central to the WFRN. In 1999, in partnership with the Boston College Center for Work and Family, Dr. MacDermid Wadsworth created the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research, an international award for the best study published in the peer-reviewed scientific press each year. Each year, the award competition recognizes the winner, finalists, and nominees for the award. Over the 25 years of its existence, over 300 articles with over 800 authors have been recognized.