Assistant Professor, School of Global Health Management & Informatics,
University of Central Florida

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Health services, Health policy, Substance use disorder treatment, Mixed methods research, Legal analysis, Policy surveillance, Qualitative research, Program evaluation

Dr. Barbara “Basia” Andraka-Christou’s research focuses on health services and health policies for expanding evidence-based treatment of substance use disorder. She also explores substance use disorder treatment from health services and health policy perspectives, including medication-assisted treatment barriers, person-centered care, and mobile health delivery.

Associate Professor, College of Social Work,
Florida State University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: At-risk youth, child welfare, family centered practice, residential youth care, youth trauma and victimization, implementation and intervention research, social policy, quality measurement and improvement systems for children’s services, quantitative methods.

Shamra Boel-Studt is an assistant professor with expertise in child welfare. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Florida Institute for Child Welfare. Her research includes interventions related to at-risk youth, family-centered practice, residential youth care, youth trauma and victimization.

Associate in Research, Division of Research & Graduate Programs,
Assistant Professor, Department of Family Medicine & Rural Health,
College of Medicine, Florida State University

As a cultural and medical anthropologist, collaborating with communities in equitable, long-term sustained partnerships to address community needs is a cornerstone of Dr. De Leon’s academic and scholarly endeavors. Her professional goals have centered on community-engaged collaborative research to eliminate health disparities and improve health outcomes for underserved and vulnerable populations. Dr. De Leon is a Co-Lead of the University of Florida–Florida State University Clinical and Translational Science Award Community Engagement Core and a member of Florida State University College of Medicine’s Network for Clinical Research, Training & Community Engagement.

Associate Professor, College of Education,
Florida State University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Interventions to enhance the language and literacy skills of preschool age children with or at-risk for disabilities and assessment/accountability and behavior management.

Dr. Dennis is an Associate Professor in Special/Elementary Education in the School of Teacher Education at Florida State University. Dr. Dennis has published refereed articles within both the early childhood and early childhood special education fields and presented at numerous conferences on topics related to literacy and language development of preschool-age children with or at risk for disabilities.

Teaching Professor, College of Social Work,
Florida State University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Clinical Social Work, Behavioral Health & Substance Use Disorders, International Social Work, Gender Studies & Women’s Issues, Cultural Diversity, Criminal Justice & Corrections

Jane Dwyer Lee is a teaching professor and licensed clinical social worker teaching undergraduate and graduate courses inperson and online. Her background in clinical social work practice and teaching includes behavioral health, substance use, international social work, gender and women’s studies, cultural diversity and criminal justice.

Associate Professor, School of Social Work,
Florida Atlantic University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Gender-specific and trauma-informed care for women that reduces stigma and encourages health empowerment, grief and loss, trauma, and substance use disorders

Dr. Heather Howard is committed to educating graduate students to become social justice-based social workers. She supplements her academic work as a consultant for Compass Collaborative which focusing on decreasing occupational burnout in helping professionals. Heather has over 23 years of clinical experience in social work in healthcare. Her clinical expertise is the treatment of grief and loss, trauma, and substance use disorders.

Associate Professor, College of Social Work,
Florida State University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Pediatric Organ Transplant Social Work, Health Outcomes in Childhood, Measurement Development, Quantitative Research Methodology

Dr. Killian is an Associate Professor at the College of Social Work, Florida State University, and has a courtesy appointment as a Professor in the College of Medicine, Florida State University. He is also Research Faculty at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas and their Solid Organ Transplant Program. He serves as a Research Scientist for the Center for the Study and Promotion of Communities, Families and Children at the College of Social Work, Florida State University. His primary research focus surrounds pediatric organ transplant recipients and their families, adherence to medication regimens, and posttransplant health-related quality of life and health outcomes.

Adjunct Professor, Askew School of Public Administration,
Florida State University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Analytical planning, strategic planning, public policy, government finance

Raoul Lavin is an experienced Assistant City Manager with a demonstrated history of working in municipal government administration.

Professor, Associate Dean for Research, College of Communication & Information,
Director, Information Institute,
Florida State University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Community Disaster Resilience; Technician Education; Professional Identity; K-12 STEM; Broadband; Educational Informatics

Dr. Marcia A. Mardis, Professor at the School of Information, is the Associate Dean for Research, Coordinator for Educational Informatics, and Director of the Information Institute. She is also research faculty at iDigInfo.

Associate Professor, College of Social Work,
Florida State University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Community Organizing and Social, Change, Civic Engagement and Civil Society, Social Movements, Qualitative Analysis of Ethics in Social Work Teaching and Practice, Cross-cultural Analysis of Social Work Practice, Environmental Social Work

John Mathias studies how environmental hazards, such as pollution and tornadoes, effect socially marginalized and under-resourced communities. He also studies how people within communities respond to such threats and work to bring about their visions of environmental justice. He teaches about macro social work, including topics such as community organizing, civil engagement and social movements.

Program Coordinator, Senior Instructor, Phyllis & Harvey Sandler School of Social Work,
College of Social Work & Criminal Justice
Florida Atlantic University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Children’s mental health, family strengthening and family preservation, and child welfare

Joy McClellan, DSW, LCSW, earned a BSW degree from Florida State University, a MSW from Barry University and a DSW from Florida Atlantic University. Her early social work practice included community organization and community mental health. Professor McClellan has worked in the areas of children’s mental health, family strengthening and family preservation, and child welfare for the last 15 years. Her special interest areas include system of care work and child welfare education. She is a member of NASW and serves as a board member of the Federation of Families of Palm Beach County.

Assistant Professor, Department of Social Work,
College of Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities,
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Adolescent Health & Wellness (Prevention Programs for At-Risk Youth & Teens); Mental Health (Emotional Intelligence, Self-Care, Self-Management), Therapeutic Strategies for Trauma, Education and Social Justice, Substance Use & Misuse, Opioid/Fentanyl Harm Reduction Strategies

Dr. McMillan currently teaches Research Methods in Social Work as well as various practice courses each semester. She is focused on utilizing her academic research skills to assist in several studies related to at-risk youth and adolescents; intimate partner violence among college students; social justice and higher education; as well as opioid harm reduction in rural communities and substance use disorders.

Assistant Professor, Early Childhood Education,
Department of Individual, Family, & Community Education,
Florida State University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Disproportionate impact of discipline practices and behavior intervention on young children and their families and the suspension and expulsion of toddlers and preschoolers. 

Dr. Chelsea T. Morris, assistant professor of Early Childhood Education in the Department of Individual, Family, and Community Education, comes to the College from the University of West Georgia. She is the founder of the Early Learning Center at the University of West Georgia. Currently; she is the research advisor for a multi-site implementation project studying the impact of training in Rebound and Recovery, a resilience curriculum that responds to community trauma.

Associate Professor, College of Engineering,
Director, Resilient Infrastructure & Disaster Response Center,
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University–Florida State University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Emergency transportation operations, Hurricane resilience, Network modeling, Transportation accessibility and safety, Connected vehicles, Intelligent transportation systems, Smart cities, and Urban mobility.

Eren Ozguven is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and Director of the Resilient Infrastructure & Disaster Response (RIDER) Center. Dr. Ozguven is focused on investigating the relationships among different infrastructure networks in Florida, utilizing his academic research in transportation engineering and background in industrial engineering and optimization.

Professor, Agnes Flaherty Stoops Professor in Child Welfare,
Florida State University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Child Welfare, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Health/Health Disparities, Homelessness, Poverty Resilience, Social Work Policy, Trauma, Well-being

Melissa Radey is a professor in Child Welfare with the College of Social Work and is a faculty affiliate of the Florida Institute for Child Welfare. Her policy-driven research focuses on low-income families and understanding barriers to economic, social, and physical well-being. She examines disparities for those involved in public service delivery by 1) investigating the role of informal and formal support systems in families’ survival and wellbeing, and, 2) considering the demands and well-being of frontline workers who serve them.

Associate Professor, College of Social Work,
Assistant Director, Institute for Justice Research & Development,
Florida State University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Criminal Justice Populations, Addiction, Trauma, Well-being & Health, Intervention Research & Design

Dr. Renn serves as a research scientist collaborating with colleagues at the Center for the Study and Promotion of Communities, Families, and Children to conduct research in school and foster settings throughout Leon and Gadsden counties. Dr. Renn’s primary research focuses on understanding the relational pathways that exist between stress, trauma, substance use, and well-being among marginalized populations, specifically those involved in the criminal justice system. Dr. Renn focuses on developing and adapting evidence-informed interventions that improve the health and well-being of marginalized groups in community-based settings.

Director, Associate Administrator, Cooperative Extension,
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University

Vonda Richardson is a Director at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. Richardson oversees FAMU’s Cooperative Extension program. She is responsible for FAMU’s Research and Extension Center in Quincy, Florida. Richardson earned her master’s degree in agricultural economics from the University of Georgia.

Assistant Professor, College of Communication & Information,
Florida State University

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Health informatics, information literacy, disadvantaged populations, health literacy

Professor Sullivan studies the impact that information access, information literacy, and reading and literacy has had in affecting the health and well-being of the women she studies. Sullivan’s recent research includes a comparative study between assessments of information literacy, health literacy, and the library science methodology Information Horizons Mapping, a large-scale bibliometric analysis of themes in global scholarship addressing information literacy displayed through data visualizations, and a study on the health information needs of immigrant and refugee women.

Assistant Professor, Retired, College of Medicine,
Department of Behavioral Science & Center on Drug & Alcohol Research,
University of Kentucky

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Social work ethics and behavioral health.

Walker provides critical instruction to doctoral students, helping to mentor them to craft academic journal articles for publication. He also serves on the University’s Institutional Review Board, providing human subjects research ethical review when research participants are currently incarcerated or have limited independent decision-making capacity. Walker also trains professional social workers, social work students, and peer mentors highlighting ethical decision-making, evidence-based practice strengths and limitations, and the intersection of trauma and behavioral health disorders.

Extension Program Developer, Professor,
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University

Dr. Worthen is a professor in the College of Engineering Sciences, Technology and Agriculture at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. One of Dr. Worthen’s areas of concentration is in the field of Agricultural Research, an interdisciplinary field that focuses on multiple areas of agricultural and rural research. Dr. Worthen’s research has focused on environmental justice, the elderly, poverty and health issues in rural communities of color. Her latest article on elderly health-related issues is published in a book chapter titled “Critical Issues in Rural Health.” Dr. Worthen currently serves as a member of the University-wide Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) committee.