Dr. Robert Hummer is the Howard W. Odum Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Fellow of the Carolina Population Center. Dr. Hummer was recently elected to be 2021 President of the Population Association of America (PAA), the largest American professional association focused on demographic and population-based research. He will be the first-ever FSU alum to serve in that role.
Dr. Hummer’s research focuses on the accurate documentation and more complete understanding of health and mortality disparities by race/ethnicity/nativity, socioeconomic status and gender in the United States. His latest book, Population Health in America (with Erin R. Hamilton, published in 2019 by the University of California Press), weaves together demographic data with social theory to provide an in-depth historical and contemporary portrait of US population health and challenges readers to examine current health policy priorities and to ask whether major shifts are needed.
Beginning in 2020, Dr. Hummer will become the Director of the long-running National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a nationally representative longitudinal study of over 20,000 American adults who are now around 40 years old and have been followed since they were adolescents. Add Health is one of the most well-utilized and cited social science data sets to have ever been collected, given its wealth of social, demographic, biological, health, and contextual information. Dr. Hummer’s goal in serving as Director of Add Health is to produce cutting-edged data for the scientific community that will help shed light on the health of American adults as their lives unfold in the 21 st Century.
Dr. Hummer reports that he received an “inspiring … transformative … incredible” educational experience while he was a PhD student in the FSU Department of Sociology. His main mentor and dissertation chairperson was Dr. Ike Eberstein. Dr. Hummer noted that mentorship from Dr. Eberstein was the most important factor in helping him transform his raw talent into a fabulous academic career, while reinforcing the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance at the same time. Dr. Hummer also was guided extensively by the knowledge and wisdom of Dr. Charles Nam; Dr. Nam was hugely influential in broadening the scope of Dr. Hummer’s research work and reinforcing the importance of integrity and ethics in everything that university professors do and stand for. Other FSU faculty members that played very important roles in Dr. Hummer’s development include Drs. Pat Martin, Jill Quadagno, Bob Weller, David Sly, Monica Boyd, Charles Tolbert, Melissa Hardy, Carl Schmertmann (Economics), and Bill Serow (Economics). The FSU Sociology Department was also a wonderfully welcoming department for students throughout Dr. Hummer’s tenure, a culture that continues to exist to the present day.
Dr. Hummer’s advice to current students at FSU is simple: 1) work hard … but also: 2) maintain a healthy work-life balance, while 3) maintaining the highest regard for professional and personal ethics. In closing, Dr. Hummer notes that the FSU Department of Sociology is a truly special context for helping students achieve their academic and professional potential in a very supportive and inclusive space. Dr. Hummer reported that he’s eternally grateful to the FSU faculty and staff members who spent such quality time with him and created a student-centered culture encompassing both academic excellence and professional/personal ethics at the highest levels.