Center for Families

Gwen Parks has received the Van Scoyoc Fellowship for her project, "When pink ribbons bind: The effect of breast cancer on mother-daughter relationships."

Parks is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Purdue. In 2006, she completed her bachelor's degree in sociology at the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University in Minnesota. Her research interests focus on family and the life course, particularly the ways in which non-normative life course transitions affect kin relations.

In addition to her thesis work, Parks is a member of the aging and family research group in sociology, led by professor Jill Suitor, where she is currently working on a project on the role of gender in filial responsibility.

The Center for Families awarded another Van Scoyoc Fellowship to Kyong-Ah Kwon, a doctoral student in the Department of Child Development and Family Studies (CDFS) at Purdue. Kwon plans to use the financial support during her dissertation project, "Coparenting, Parenting, and Socio-Emotional Development in Toddlers," which will highlight the importance of supportive coparenting and positive parenting, especially fathering, for child development. 

Kwon earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul, Korea, before coming to Purdue. In 2004, she completed a second master's degree thesis through CDFS that focused on using teacher intervention to promote peer interaction in children with disabilities. Kwon's research interests address parenting in diverse contexts and its impact on social-emotional development in young children, along with quality of early childhood education programs and child development outcomes. She's currently exploring those interests in a research project that she developed to study adjustment and parenting among Asian international graduate students and their spouses.

Kwon recently took a position at Georgia State University as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Early Childhood Education.