Participants

Lynn A. Addington, PhD is a professor in the Department of Justice, Law and Criminology at American University in Washington, D.C.  She earned her PhD in criminal justice from the University at Albany (SUNY) and her JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  Her research focuses on fatal and non-fatal violent victimization with an emphasis on policy responses to preventing violence and serving victims.  Recent projects have explored these issues in the context of school violence, non-college attending emerging adults, repeat victims, and LGBT individuals. She has worked with colleagues at various federal agencies in the United States to improve national crime measures (including the US Departments of Justice and Education).  In 2016, she received AU’s top award for faculty research.  She has served as a Visiting Fellow with the Bureau of Justice Statistics and as the editor of Homicide Studies.  Her recent publications have appeared in a range of outlets including the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Justice Quarterly, and Trauma, Violence and Abuse.  She is the co-editor (with James P. Lynch) of a volume of original research entitled Understanding Crime Statistics: Revisiting the Divergence of the NCVS and UCR (2007, Cambridge University Press).

Laura Amo is Assistant Professor in School of Management at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her research focuses on technology behavior at work and cybersecurity education with focus on gender gaps. She has received funding from the National Security Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation.

Nicole Bracy, PhD is a Senior Research Consultant for Harder+Company Community Research, an applied social research organization that prioritizes community-driven research and elevating the voices of marginalized communities. She works closely with criminal justice agencies across the state of California, local community-based organizations that provide services for individuals returning home from prison, as well as foundations who fund justice reform advocacy and policy development.  Nicole’s personal research interests include school policing, the effects of school security measures on students, and students’ perceptions of security measures used in their schools. In addition to her position at Harder+Company, Nicole teaches courses in criminal justice, research methods, and statistics in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University. Nicole holds a PhD in Criminology from the University of Delaware.

Janis Brown, PhD is the Supervisory Statistician that leads the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) in the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) within the U.S. Department of Education (ED).  She joined OCR in February 2015 and seeks to continually augment the power and utility of the CRDC data and the benefits those data provide to OCR and ED staff, state and local educational agencies, researchers, and other stakeholders. Dr. Brown has over 20 years of experience managing large-scale data collections and research projects, providing technical direction and assistance, monitoring contracts and grants, and conducting database training workshops for the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to joining OCR, she was a Senior Statistician in the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) where she managed the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) transcript studies and NAEP validity studies programs.  Dr. Brown received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from Howard University. Dr. Brown specializes in educational statistics, research design, large-scale assessments and administrative data collections, transcript studies and analysis, and policy analysis.

Maurice “Mo” Canady holds a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Jacksonville State University. He is a former lieutenant with the City of Hoover Police Department in Hoover, Alabama. After a 25-year career, he retired from the Hoover Police Department in 2011. The last twelve years of his career were spent as the supervisor of the School Services Division. He was appointed as an instructor for the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) in 2001 and a NASRO board member in 2005. He is a past President of the Alabama Association of School Resource Officers.  Mo now serves as the executive director for NASRO. He recently testified on the matter of SRO National Standards before The Federal Commission on School Safety. He has also testified on the matter of school safety before the United States House Committee on Education and the Workforce. He is a co-author of the national report, “To Protect and Educate – The School Resource Officer and the Prevention of Violence in Schools.”

Chris Chapman, PhD is a Branch Chief at the Institute of Education Science's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). His Branch was responsible for fielding the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11. Dr. Chapman has worked at NCES for the last 16 years, and has managed two prior longitudinal studies and a series of household surveys designed to collect information from families about experiences with their children's preschool through high school education. Prior to joining NCES, Dr. Chapman was a project director for the American Institutes for Research and worked at the Ohio State University's Polymetrics Laboratory.

Christina Conolly, PhD is the Director for Psychological Services with the Montgomery County Public Schools in Rockville, MD.  She was the Director for Crisis Intervention and Safety for the Waukegan Public Schools and was responsible for managing the four phases of emergency management and safety/security for her school district.  In this capacity she supervised the suicide and bullying prevention programs, the district mental health response team, physical restraints, isolated timeouts, district and school crisis plan development, incident action planning for large scale school events, staff training, and consultation with school buildings and community agencies.  Additionally, she oversaw the district's bullying committee and oversaw the district's efforts to develop policies, procedures, and curriculum used to combat bullying in the schools. She has authored and co-authored several articles and a book on the PREPaRE school crisis prevention and intervention curriculum.  She is the co-chairperson of the National School Safety & Crisis Response Committee and coauthor of the PREPaRE Workshop 1: Crisis Prevention and Preparedness.  She is also the co-author of School Crisis Prevention and Intervention: The PREPaRE Model (2016).

Matthew Cuellar, PhD received his MSW from the School of Social Work at The University of Alabama in 2013, where he gained practice experience working in a juvenile court system as a Mental Health Consultant. Dr. Cuellar received his PhD from the College of Social Work at University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2016, where he also received a Minor in Statistics from the Department of Statistics and Business Analytics (Haslam School of Business) after successfully completing the Intercollegiate Graduate Statistics Program (IGSP). Dr. Cuellar’s scholarly focus is on school safety and promoting student development and equal opportunity in United States school systems. His current research investigates the dynamic processes concerning the effects of school safety on student performance and development; processes that are critical to meeting the Grand Challenge of Ensuring Healthy Development of All Youth.  Dr. Cuellar has published over a dozen peer-reviewed articles on the topic of school safety and has delivered countless workshops and symposia on school programming and practice evaluation in school systems. His research has assisted school administrators, mental healthcare providers, and other personnel across the United States in targeting and implementing interventions that can improve student performance while maintaining a safe and nurturing learning environment. Dr. Cuellar's research has been funded by private, state, and federal organizations. Dr. Cuellar has worked with hundreds of masters- and doctoral-level students as instructor, advisor, and mentor. He also has extensive experience teaching research methods, introductory and advanced quantitative methods, systematic planning and evaluation for interpersonal practice, school social work, evidence-based practice, and child and family welfare at the graduate level. Read more at Dr. Cuellar's research website

Karen J. DeAngelis, PhD is the Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Associate Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership for the Warner School of Education and Human Development at the University of Rochester. She holds a bachelor's in economics from Colby College and a master's in economics and a doctorate in economics of education/educational policy, both from Stanford University. She uses economics as a lens to examine educational policy issues, with a focus on K-12 teacher and administrator labor markets. She is particularly concerned with policies and organizational conditions affect the supply, qualifications, and distribution of teachers and administrators. A second major research focus is the utilization and equitable distribution of educational resources, particularly in the areas of school safety and support services. She is currently completing a study using national data that examines the intrastate and interstate distribution of school counselors. Her research has been published in several leading journals, including the Journal of Education Finance, Educational Administration Quarterly, Journal of Teacher Education, Leadership and Policy in Schools, Journal of School Leadership, Education Policy Analysis Archives, Education and Urban Society, and the Journal of School Choice. She has extensive experience using large-scale educational databases at the district, state, and national levels.  Before joining the Warner School in 2007, Dr. DeAngelis conducted P-16 policy research for the Illinois Education Research Council.

Jeremy Finn is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Education (quantitative methods) at the State University of new York at Buffalo. He received his PhD in educational Measurement, Evaluation and Statistical Analysis (MESA) from The University of Chicago.  He taught at Stanford University and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and has held research fellowships with the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in Stockholm, the National Research Council (NRC), the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). For the past several years, he has been studying the costs and intended and unintended consequences of school security measures. The work has resulted in several publications including a book chapter entitled “Security measures and discipline in American high schools” (with Timothy Servoss). His previous research focused on issues of educational equity including gender differences in educational attainment, educational risk and resilience, and engagement/disengagement from school. The work on student engagement began with the now-classic paper “Withdrawing from School” (Review of Educational Research) which explains how dropping out and others forms of withdrawal have their roots in the earliest grades and result from many interactions between students and their schools. He was also an investigator in the largest randomized experiment ever conducted in education, Tennessee’s class size study, Project STAR. The project, which demonstrated the academic and social benefits of small classes in the early grades, has become the basis of class size reduction initiatives across the U.S. and abroad.

Ben Fisher is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice. He received his PhD in Community Research and Action with a minor in Quantitative Methods from Vanderbilt University in 2016. His research interests center on school safety, with particular interests in school security measures, exclusionary discipline, perceptions of safety at school, school climate, and racial inequalities in these areas. Dr. Fisher is currently working on three studies funded through the National Institute of Justice’s Comprehensive School Safety Initiative, including School Climate, Student Discipline, and the Implementation of School Resource Officers (principal investigator),Understanding the Adoption, Function, and Consequences of School Resource Officer Use in Understudied Settings (co-principal investigator), and Nashville Longitudinal Study of Youth Safety and Wellbeing (investigator). His research has been published in journals from multiple academic disciplines including criminal justice, education, and adolescent development.

Michael Furlong, PhD is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor (UC Santa Barbara) and is a Research Professor in the Gervitz School of Education (International Center for School Based Youth Development). He is past Editor of the Journal of School Violence (2008-2015), a co-editor of the Handbook of School Violence and Safety (2006, 2012) and the Handbook of Positive Psychology in Schools(2009, 2014). He was co-author of the original California Department of Education school safety planning guide (Safe School: A Planning Guide for Action, 1989). He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and American Educational Research Association and a member of the Society for Study of School Psychology. He currently is the Principal Investigator of the IES-funded Project CoVitality, which is validating schoolwide social emotional wellness assessments.

Billie Gastic is an Associate Dean of the Division of Applied Undergraduate Studies and the Center for Applied Liberal Arts, New York University. Her research focuses on school safety, especially in urban public schools for students of color and sexual minority students. As special advisor, she oversees the School’s portfolio of graduate, undergraduate, and non-credit programs and faculty and provides strategic counsel to the Interim Dean on matters facing the School. As associate dean, she is the academic leader of the Division of Applied Undergraduate Studies, the Division of Languages, and the Center for Applied Liberal Arts. Before NYU, Dr. Gastic was chief research officer at Relay Graduate School of Education and served on the New York State Professional Standards and Practices Board for Teaching. She has also been a faculty member at UMass Boston and Temple. Billie Gastic earned a PhD in the sociology of education and an M.A. in sociology from Stanford, an Ed.M. from Harvard, and a B.A. in economics from Yale.

Cora Graves, JD, EdS is Assistant Principal at Gwinnett County Public Schools, the largest school system in Georgia and the 13th largest school district in the country. Prior to Mrs. Graves' appointment as Assistant Principal for Berkmar High School, her work experience included 4 years as an Assistant Director of Student Discipline and Behavioral Interventions.  She served for over 11 years as a School Social Worker and Disciplinary Hearing Officer for Clayton Public Schools and for Chicago Public Schools.  Mrs. Graves has a Masters degree in Social Work from the University of Chicago, an Educational Leadership Specialist degree from the University of West Georgia, and a Juris Doctor in Health Law from the DePaul University College of Law. She is the co-founder of JAC & Associates, LLC, a consulting firm that specializes in educational and social justice.

Rachel Hansen, PhD is a Statistician at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and serves as the project officer on the School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) and the School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). She has been at the Department of Education for 7 years and has post-masters graduate certificates in Educational Statistics and Research Methods, Educational Measurement, and Program Evaluation from the University of Arkansas, a M.S. in Experimental Psychology from Missouri State University and a B.A. in Psychology from Drury University.

Paul Hirschfield, PhD is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University and an Affiliated Professor in the Program in Criminal Justice. His theory-based research has focused on the causes and consequences of intensified surveillance and criminalization of American youth, especially in schools.  His recent policy-centered research has focused on three issues: 1) programs that facilitate the transition from correctional to community educational settings 2) current efforts across the USA to expand positive and restorative alternatives to exclusionary discipline and to reduce schools’ reliance upon police and 3) police organizational practices and policies that predict rates of deadly force. He has participated in evaluations of various social policies and school-based interventions, with an emphasis on their impact on delinquency and educational attainment. Dr. Hirschfield’s work has been published in American Educational Research Journal, Criminology, Sociology of Education, Theoretical Criminology, and Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice.

Aaron Kupchik received his PhD in Sociology from New York University and is currently a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. His research focuses on the policing and punishment of youth in schools, courts, and correctional facilities, and on how these practices shape social inequality. He has published six books, including The Real School Safety Problem: The long-term consequences of harsh school punishment (U. California Press, 2016), Homeroom Security: School discipline in an age of fear (NYU Press, 2010), and The Palgrave International Handbook of School Discipline, Surveillance and Social Control (Palgrave, 2018), in addition to dozens of articles in peer-refereed journals and several other publications. He is a past recipient of the American Society of Criminology Michael J. Hindelang Book Award and the American Society of Criminology Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice. He is currently an Executive Counselor for the American Society of Criminology, serves on several editorial boards, and has occupied numerous leadership positions within the American Society of Criminology and American Sociological Association’s Crime, Law and Deviance Section.

Daniel Losen, JD, MEd is director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies, an initiative at the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles (CRP) at UCLA.  He has worked at the Civil Rights Project since 1999, when it was affiliated with Harvard Law School, where he lectured on law. His work concerns the impact of law and policy on children of color and language minority students including: the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act with a focus on promoting diversity, access to effective teachers, and improving graduation rate accountability; the IDEA and racial inequity in special education; school discipline and revealing and redressing the “School-to- Prison Pipeline;” and protecting the rights of English learners to equal educational opportunity. On these and related topics Mr. Losen conducts law and policy research; publishes books, reports, and articles and works closely with federal and state legislators to inform legislative initiatives. Both for The Civil Rights Project, and independently, he provides guidance to policymakers, educators and advocates at the state and district level. Before becoming a lawyer, Mr. Losen taught in public schools for ten years, including work as a school founder of an alternative public school.

Jason Nance, PhD, JD is a Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. He also serves as Associate Director for Education Law and Policy at UF’s Center on Children and Families.  Dr. Nance holds a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a PhD in Education Administration from the Ohio State University. He focuses his research and writing on racial inequalities in the public education system, school discipline, school security, implicit racial bias, the school-to-prison pipeline, students’ rights, and the legal profession. Dr. Nance served as the reporter for the American Bar Association’s Joint Task Force on Reversing the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Professor Nance has been a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at the Villanova University School of Law and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Applied Statistics at the Ohio State University’s College of Education and Human Ecology. He also was a litigation associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP for several years and clerked for Judge Kent A. Jordan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. Before attending graduate school and law school, Professor Nance was a public school math teacher in in a large, metropolitan school district.

Anthony Petrosino, PhD is Director of the WestEd Justice & Prevention Research Center, focusing on  research to identify solutions that promote positive community and school environments.  He is also Associate Director of the Health & Justice Program, and Senior Research Fellow at George Mason University’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy.  Dr. Petrosino has more than 30 years of experience conducting research in areas such as violence prevention, school safety, and juvenile justice with an emphasis in program evaluation and research synthesis. He co-directs a number of federally funded research studies, including randomized controlled trials, for the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  Prior to joining WestEd, Dr. Petrosino helped develop the Campbell Collaboration (C2), an organization that conducts reviews of research on the effects of social interventions. He has published over 150 juried articles, book chapters, and other publications. He serves on the Nevada Governor’s Task Force on School Safety and on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Experimental Criminology. Dr. Petrosino received WestEd’s Paul D. Hood Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field, and was named Honorary Fellow by the Academy of Experimental Criminology.

John Rosiak has more than 30 years of cross-sector experience helping school, law enforcement, mental health, juvenile justice, and other partners develop effective collaborative efforts around safe and healthy youth. His work supporting school-based law enforcement partnerships has included many groundbreaking publications related to effective School Resource Officer (SRO) programs; innovative training workshops for law enforcement, educators, and others; and numerous presentations at national and state conferences. John recently completed the school-based law enforcement curriculum for the State of Texas, and an evaluation of the SRO program for Milwaukee, WI.

Samantha Schichtel-Greenwood is a PhD student in the Educational Psychology and Quantitative Methods (EPQM) program at the University at Buffalo. She holds a bachelor's degree in Secondary Education and English from Chatham University, a Master's degree in EPQM from the University at Buffalo and is a recipient of the GSE Dean's Scholarship for Educational Diversity and Excellence. Her research focuses on the factors influencing persistence and degree completion among community college students.

Timothy Servoss, PhD (Organizer) is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Canisius College, where he teaches basic and advanced statistical methods. He holds a master’s degree in School Psychology at which time he developed a strong interest in disparities related to special education status.  He received his PhD in Educational Psychology and Quantitative Methods from the University at Buffalo where his interest in school security first emerged. He has presented and published a number of papers on the topic, some with J. Finn, using merged NCES data sets.

Bernadette Smith is principal for North Park Junior High School in Lockport, New York.  She is also completing her doctorate in Educational Leadership and Policy at the University at Buffalo – SUNY.  Ms. Smith has received Masters degrees in Secondary Education and Administration and Supervision from Niagara University.  She also holds 21 years of teaching and administrative experience in the public school setting.

Jessica Tamulonis is a doctoral student in the Combined School and Counseling Psychology program at the University of Buffalo – SUNY in the Counseling Psychology track.  Her dissertation research will focus on the relationship between school security and mental health as she has specific interests in evaluating mental health assessment and crisis intervention as security measures, emphasizing the need for early identification of problems and increased access to mental health resources as proactive measures to maintaining school safety.  Jessica is the lead author of the annotated bibliography for this conference.

Wilfred (Fred) Wagstaff is the Executive Director of Safety and Security for the Buffalo Public Schools and has 20 years with the Buffalo Board of Education Security Department.  He attended Central State University in Ohio, Buffalo State College, Erie Community College and Empire State College and also served as an Officer with the Buffalo Police Department for one year. His solid track record and commitment to safety has afforded him opportunities of upward mobility. Now, as the executive director for Safety and Security he’s responsible for leading the charge of protecting over 34,000 scholars in the district. With just under 60 officers and a supervisor, he leverages the team’s skills to create safe spaces for education to happen. Additionally, he’s instrumental in the implementation of strategic security programs that provide operational excellence. Fred’s daily operations include some of the following activities: design all professional development for security officers which may include multi-agency collaboration with local, state and federal law enforcement entities; responds to and direct district personnel in anticipation of and during emergency situations; and advises School Board, Superintendent and Cabinet on all district-wide safety issues and concerns. Furthermore, he assists schools in developing their Building Level Emergency Response Plans. That includes designing, evaluating and modifying emergency management policies and procedures to ensure that programs will perform effectively in an emergency and remain in compliance with legal requirements.  Fred has received numerous awards and accolades from local, county and state agencies for civic engagement and community service.