Jun Sung Hong, an assistant professor at the Wayne State School of Social Work, is a recipient of the WSU Academy of Scholars Junior Faculty Award for the 2017-18 academic year.

Established in 2003, the award is given annually to a select number of junior faculty members who have a significant record of publications or creative achievement and who have achieved national or international recognition very early in their careers. Specifically, the award is given to one junior faculty member at the assistant professor or non-tenured associate professor level in the natural sciences, engineering or medicine, one in the social sciences or law, and one in the humanities or fine and performing arts. The award carries a $1,000 honorarium to be used for the awardee's academic research program.

Hong, who will be presented with the award at the annual banquet of the Academy of Scholars in October, joined the School of Social Work's faculty in 2013. He has conducted extensive research on factors associated with bias-based bullying and peer victimization of racial/ethnic minority, immigrant, LGBTQ, gender non-conforming, and juvenile justice-involved youth as well as impoverished adolescents and young adults in the United States and South Korea. An adjunct assistant professor (during the summer) at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea, Hong has collaborated with researchers in South Korea, Taiwan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom on bullying and peer victimization.

Hong received his Ph.D. in Social Work at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and is a past recipient of the Fulbright research grant and the Council on Social Work Education Minority Fellowship. His research has been published in major peer-reviewed journals including the and Youth & Society. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Child and Family Studies and is currently co-authoring a book entitled "School Bullying, Diversity, and Disparities: Investigating Youth Vulnerability, Marginalization, and Victimization."

Hong is a dynamic teacher and presenter who regularly conducts interviews with media outlets and consults with school districts on bullying and school violence. On the strength of student nominations, he was awarded the 2016-17 Social Work Full-time Teacher of the Year Award. He recently delivered keynote addresses at the 2017 World Anti-Bullying Forum in Sweden and the 2017 Asian Conference on Social Work Education in Taiwan. This month, he was invited to present on bullying at the British Psychological Society at Keele University in the United Kingdom.

The purpose of the WSU Academy of Scholars is to raise the scholastic prestige of the university by bringing the most prominent academic experts to campus and to create a community of scholars from among its most celebrated researchers. The academy has hosted Nobel Prize winners and experts in a variety of disciplines from around the world.