Brian Ogolsky earns prestigious Fellow status from the National Council on Family Relations
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Professor Brian Ogolsky, part of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, was recently one of three people to earn the prestigious Fellow status from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR).
The honor recognizes Ogolsky’s outstanding and enduring contributions to family science in scholarship, teaching, outreach, and professional service.
“It’s an unbelievable feeling and wonderful recognition from peers and colleagues that your work matters and that the research you do has had an impact on people’s lives,” Ogolsky said. “It’s really touching and among the best honors that I can imagine.”
Ogolsky’s work outlines core processes in romantic relationship commitment and maintenance. He has also shown the connection between relationships and family experiences — research that is now informing policies and practices to support diverse families. He has authored many peer-reviewed papers and co-authored award-winning books on those topics.
What first drew Ogolsky to study romantic relationships was an intense curiosity, especially given their prevalence in the human experience.
“I study relationships — they’re in everyone’s life all the time, so it’s an applicable, hard-hitting, and high-impact subject,” Ogolsky said. “Almost every human being knows something about relationships. It’s a powerful field of study.”
His work looks at how relationships function in real-world contexts, including a recent study on how location-sharing apps change the way people communicate in their relationships.
Ogolsky focuses on the positive side of relationships for the bulk of his research, landing on relationship maintenance. Essentially, Ogolsky researches the behaviors and actions that people use to sustain romantic relationships, acknowledging that many relationships break down without active efforts to sustain them.
But he also seeks to understand less-positive relationships, including intimate partner violence after transitions. He and collaborator Jennifer Hardesty, also a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, have studied how courts handle divorce and dissolving relationships when children are involved.
They found that teaching attorneys about intimate partner violence improves outcomes. Now, they are pivoting to focus on how to best intervene at the judge level.
“Essentially, we are searching for the most bang for our buck to have the highest impact in helping families,” Ogolsky said. “The information we find can influence policy decisions.”
NCFR is not the only group to recognize Ogolsky’s academic work and mentoring. In 2023, Ogolsky received the U. of I.’s Campus Distinguished Promotion Award, recognizing his scholarly contributions. He has also received multiple honors recognizing his excellence in uplifting students, including the University of Illinois System’s University Scholar recognition in 2023.
Ogolsky also earned the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring, and he has consistently been named to the U. of I. List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent.
“My mentors were wonderful, and they inspired me to want to pay it forward,” Ogolsky said. “I’ve been blessed with some amazing students who have gone on to do amazing things themselves. It’s a bidirectional relationship: my graduate students make me better, too.”
Before coming to the U. of I., Ogolsky received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Western Washington University and his master’s and doctoral degrees in family studies and human development from the University of Arizona.
At NCFR, Ogolsky has served in various roles, including as a member-at-large on the Board of Directors and as a member of the Research and Theory Section.
Ogolsky will be recognized as an NCFR Fellow at the 2026 NCFR Annual Conference, Nov. 18–21, in Minneapolis.