Areas of Expertise
Criminological Theory, Criminal Law and Procedure, Crime Prevention
Education
Biography
I earned my Ph.D. in Criminology from Indiana University at Pennsylvania in 2007. The subject of criminology fascinates me because it truly is the science of promoting justice and alleviating evil. My dissertation was titled: "Testing Reintegrative Shaming Theory as an Explanation for Bullying Behavior among University Students: Parenting, Personality, and the Dyadic Relationship between Bullies and their Victims."
Before joining the University of North Florida, I worked as an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Southern Utah and Lees McRae College in North Carolina. I have taught courses in Criminology, Juvenile Delinquency and Justice, Law Enforcement, Criminal Law and Procedure, Comparative Criminal Justice Systems, Crime in the Workplace, History of Criminal Justice, Terrorism, Research Methods, Public Policy and Statistics.
As a doctorate student, I worked as statistical consultant in the applied research lab at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and assisted on research projects at Pine Grove Prison in Pennsylvania (which is a prison that houses juveniles who are convicted as adults.)
My Masters thesis, which was completed at IUP, was titled: "An Empirical Assessment of Ronald Aker’s Social Learning Theory of Crime and Deviance as it Pertains to Youth Drug Use."
As a graduate student, I was employed in a behavioral health position that involved working with children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbances, and as a group home supervisor for autistic adults.
My Bachelor degree is also from IUP, and is in Psychology. My current research project involves the construction and application of violence prediction instruments. Violence prediction instruments are used to estimate risk by scoring individuals on a continuum using risk-related attributes, such as drug abuse, criminal offense history, employment status and childhood exposure to physical or sexual abuse. This is done in a manner similar to how automobile insurance companies determine risk levels using the characteristics of drivers.
