Professor Wilson has served as dean of the college of Human Sciences since January, 2008. He is a Fellow of the National Council on Family Relations and was honored for lifetime contributions to cross-cultural and cross-national family studies by the NCFR with the presentation of the prestigious Jan Trost Award in 2007. Dr. Wilson has held a number of administrative roles and has also won national teaching recognition and research and engagement awards at several universities.

Wilson has served on several editorial boards and as guest editor for Marriage and Family Review as well as reviewer for many other scholarly journals including Family Relations, Handbook of Marriage and the Family, Journal of Marriage and the Family, Family Relations, Journal of Adolescent Research, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Journal of Family Issues. His research has resulted in more than 50 funded grants, over 100 juried publications, as well as nearly a hundred published abstracts to national and international professional bodies.  He has also given more than a dozen international invited presentations, 25 presentations to state and regional professional bodies, and he has been invited to speak at 41 state and community meetings. Wilson’s areas of scholarship include  1) adolescents and families, 2) cross-cultural families, 3) parent-child interactions,  and 4) increasing the capacity of higher education internationally.

Early in his career he served as a US Peace Corps teacher in Kenya for two years, and returned, with his family, 22 years later for a year to teach and carry out research with Kenyan colleagues at Kenyatta University near Nairobi as a Visiting Senior Fulbright Scholar. He continues collaboration with colleagues in Kenya, Mexico, and with colleagues at several universities in China.