Biographical Page
Peter J. Delany, PhD., ACSW, LCSW-C,
CAPT, United States Public Health Service
CAPT Peter Delany, PhD, is the Program Director for Health Services Research in the Division of Treatment & Recovery Research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, (NIAAA), National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has also served as a Senior Health Analyst with the Office of Applied Studies at Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Deputy Director of the Division of Epidemiology, Services, and Prevention Research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), NIH and was a collaborating scientist on the National Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies Program Cooperative. Dr. Delany received his undergraduate education from the University of Maryland at College Park and his Masters in Social Work and Doctorate from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. where he holds an adjunct faculty position at the National Catholic School of Social Service. His primary research interest has been the development and management of service delivery systems to meet the needs of offender and other underserved populations. He has published a number of articles and book chapte-rs on these topics.
Orlando Patterson
John Cowles Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
Orlando Patterson received his B.S. in economics from London University and his Ph.D. in sociology from the London School of Economics in 1965. After faculty appointments at the London School of Economics and the University of the West Indies, he moved to Harvard in 1969, where he was appointed professor of sociology. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His publications include two award-winning books: Slavery and Social Death (1983), which received both the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Sorokin Prize from the American Sociological Association and the Ralph Bunche Award from the American Political Science Association, and Freedom: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (1991), which received the National Book Award in non-fiction. He currently is working on a second volume of Freedom as well as a trilogy on race, immigration, and multiculturalism in the contemporary United States.
Victor Asal
Victor Asal joined the faculty of the Political Science Department of the University at Albany in Fall 2003 (Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2003; M.A. Hebrew University, Israel, 1996). Asal is a specialist in Comparative Politics and International Relations. His research focuses on the interaction of international relations and domestic politics, notably how this interaction influences ethnic conflict and ethnic terrorism.
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Sandra Austin
Dr. Sandra Austin (Ed.D., University of Massachusetts, 2001) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Welfare, University at Albany. Her research interest focuses on how social policy impacts the economic and emotional well being of low income women and children. Her other current research examines how the formation of health ministries in Black Churches can assist African Americans in addressing health disparities like diabetes. Her research is informed by years as a clinician in mental health, marketing experience in the corporate sector, and university administrative experience TOP
Jenna Basiliere
Jenna Basiliere is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Women's Studies at the University at Buffalo. Her research interests include the ways sexuality is addressed in a transnational context, gender diversity, queer media interpretations, theatre as a form of political resistance in Latin America, and retrospective interpretations of feminist resistance. Her dissertation research involves ethnographic analysis of female-bodied drag performers, and their relationships to notions of performance, audience, and liberation.
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Cathy Carballeira
Cathy Carballeira (MA, M. Phil, LCSWR) is a doctoral candidate at Stony Brook University School of Social Welfare and a Research Assistant at the Social Justice Center. Cathy is also the Corresponding Secretary for the National Association of Puerto Rican and Hispanic Social Workers and is chairing their conference at Stony Brook on June 8th on Immigration and Social Justice. Cathy is reviewing transcripts from interviews on the Poospatuck Reservation of the Unkechaug Nation for her doctoral dissertation. TOP
Bonnie E. Carlson
Bonnie E. Carlson, Ph.D., CSW, is Professor of Social Welfare, School of Social Welfare, University at Albany. Her past research has focused on intimate partner violence, physical child abuse, and child sexual abuse, including sibling incest, as well as public attitudes toward domestic violence. Her current research focuses on trauma histories and parenting strain among mothers who are drug users and a mindfulness meditation group intervention for clients in treatment for drug and alcohol dependency.
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Alyssa Colton
Alyssa Colton received her Ph.D. in English from the University at Albany in 2001. Her essay, “Legacy of a Suicide: Writing and the Suicide Survivor,” appeared in Jeffrey Berman’s book, Surviving Literary Suicide. Another essay, “From Trauma to (Re)Birth: The Birth Story as a Site of Transformation,” was published in a special issue on trauma and rhetoric of JAC: A Quarterly Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Rhetoric, Writing, Multiple Literacies, and Politics. She is currently working on a book project on birth stories and is Lecturer in English and Liaison for the University in the High Schools Program at the University at Albany.
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José E. Cruz
José E. Cruz is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the New York Latino Research and Resources Network (NYLARNet) at the University at Albany. His research is about Latino political participation in the Northeast, focusing on Puerto Ricans in New York and Connecticut. His work explores the role of race and ethnicity in the political process, how minority elites fashion political alliances, and the role of leadership in bridging the gap between political representation and policy responsiveness. His most recent publications are “Latino Voting in the 2004 Election: The Case of New York” (with Cecilia Ferradino and Sally Friedman) (Albany, NY: NYLARNet, November 2006) and “Latino Politics in Connecticut: Between Political Representation and Policy Responsiveness,” in Andrés Torres, ed., pp. 237-252 Latinos in New England (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006). TOP
Tylea Dernavich
Tylea Dernavich has recently received a Master's of Science in Educational Psychology and Methodology at the University at Albany. She is currently enrolled in the doctoral program in school psychology at the University. Tylea has worked as a research assistant for Dr. Stacy Williams for the last two years, and her research interests include early literacy, parent-training, and adventure-based counseling.
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Vajeera Dorabawila
Vajeera Dorabawila received her Ph.D. and masters degrees in demography from the University of Pennsylvania. She also holds bachelors degrees in economics and mathematics. Dr. Dorabawila is currently a Program Research Specialist III with the Bureau of Evaluation and Research, New York State Office of Children and Family Services. She was most recently a Research Scientist and Assistant Research Professor at the School of Social Welfare, University at Albany. Previously, she was an Economist Consultant at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., where her research and analysis focused on poverty issues, such as child labor, gender/race differentials, wage differentials, and education in developing countries. Her other areas of specialization include homelessness, specifically estimation issues as well as TANF to work. Her current research interests are focused on child and youth welfare issues as well as research method applications.
Edwina Dorch
Edwina Dorch is an Associate Professor who will join the Bush School of Public Administration at Texas A & M University in Fall 2007. Here at the University at Albany, she has appointments with both Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy and the School of Social Welfare. She has performed cost-benefit and policy- implementation analyses for two New York state offices as well as for New York City’s Public Welfare Department. Until recently, Edwina was also Mentoring and Training Director for the University at Albany’s Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities. She is certified to provide diversity training through classes at the National Cultural Competency Institution and the National Coalition Building Institute, is a member of the University’s Difficult Dialogues Team, and is soon to receive training certificates from the Anti-Defamation League’s Diversity Training Institute and Boston College’s Institute for the Study and Promotion of Race and Culture. Prior to academia, Edwina was a Children’s Services Administrative Researcher for Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services, where she was responsible for creating statistics reports and approving and monitoring child welfare research contracts with area universities. For the Bush School, Edwina will teach courses in social welfare policy and diversity and affirmative action as well as a capstone course assessing low-income housing builders in Mississippi and Louisiana (post-hurricanes Katrina, Wilma, and Rita) for the Congressional Research Service, Government and Finance Division. TOP
Virginia Eubanks
Virginia Eubanks joined the Department of Women’s Studies at the University at Albany in 2004 after completing her Ph.D. in Science and Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Eubanks came to her research on technology, women’s poverty, and citizenship in the United States through a history of activism in community media and technology center movement. She is currently working on a book project entitled “Popular Technology: Citizenship and Inequality in the Information Economy.” She teaches courses in public policy, research methodology, and science and technology studies. Eubanks also co-founded the “Popular Technology Workshops,” which serve as a place for ordinary people to come together in order to define their most pressing problems in the “high-tech” economy and develop their own solutions. The workshops are grounded in the idea that ordinary people have the ability and the right to create their own tools to promote economic, political, social, and cultural democracy.
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Shawn Flanigan
Shawn Flanigan has recently received a Ph.D. in Public Administration at the University at Albany. She will begin a faculty position as an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at San Diego State University in the Fall. Shawn’s expertise is the intersection of political violence and charity.
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Sally Friedman
Sally Friedman is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany. With research interests centering around a variety of aspects of representation, she teaches courses on Congress, women and politics, and methodology. Professor Friedman has a forthcoming book (May 2007) Dilemmas of Representation: Local Politics, National Factors and the Home Styles of New York State Representatives, which examines what legislators do at the district and national levels of politics. TOP
David A. Gerber
David A. Gerber is Professor of History and Department Chair at the University at Buffalo, where he teaches courses in nineteenth and twentieth century American History. His principal interest as an historian has been on questions of social and personal identify, group formation, and the shaping of American social pluralism and cultural diversity. He has authored and co-edited books on African Americans, German, Irish, and British immigrants, American Jews, and disabled veterans. He is currently writing a book for Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introduction series on “Immigration and American Self-Understanding.”
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Twyla J. Hill
Twyla J. Hill, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Wichita State University in Kansas. Her teaching and research specialties are families, aging, and research methods. She has received numerous external and internal grants. Her research has been published in the Journal of Family Issues and the International Journal of Aging and Human Development, among other journals.
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Janell Hobson
Janell Hobson is an Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at the University at Albany. Her research focuses on literary and popular representations of women of African descent. Hobson has also begun work on an oral history project exploring the tragedy behind a ferryboat disaster on August 1, 1970 between the Caribbean islands of St. Kitts and Nevis, where her parents were born and where she spent her early childhood. She is the author of Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 2005).
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Laura Hopson
Laura Hopson is a recent graduate of the doctoral program at the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work and will be joining the faculty at the University at Albany School of Social Welfare in September 2007. She has also recently completed a prevention fellowship funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. Laura Hopson’s research interests include school-based intervention with adolescents to decrease risk behavior, substance abuse prevention, and HIV prevention. TOP
Lani V. Jones
Lani V. Jones is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Welfare at the University at Albany. She received both her MSW (1992) and Ph.D. (2000) from Boston College. Her areas of specialization are intervention research, psychosocial competence, and group work and mental health in urban communities. She has research interests in the area of evidence-based practice with a focus on psychosocial competence, group work, and positive mental health outcomes with ethnic minority women. Her current research projects involve an evaluation of a culturally specific group intervention aimed at enhancing psychosocial competence among Black women with co-occurring disorders of substance abuse and depression, and the exploration of factors that contribute to the achievement of psychosocial competence.
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Heather Larkin
Heather Larkin is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Welfare at University at Albany. She received her Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America. Her research focuses on integrated service system responses to the complex issues associated with substance abuse, aging, and adverse childhood experiences. She has begun to explore factors contributing to increasingly integrated systems, and plans to conduct research evaluating whether more highly integrated human service agencies lead to better outcomes. Her fields of specialization include substance abuse, impact of adverse childhood experiences, aging, meditation interventions, integrative service system responses, and Integral Restorative Processes (IRP). TOP
Cathleen A. Lewandowski
Cathleen A. Lewandowski, Ph.D., LSCSW, received her doctorate from the University of Kansas and her MSW degree from St. Louis University. Dr. Lewandowski is Associate Professor and Director, Center for Human Services Research (CHSR) at the School of Social Welfare, University at Albany. Her recent research has focused on drug treatment outcomes for women who are receiving child welfare, welfare, and drug treatment services. Currently, she is conducting a study that is assessing the need for outreach services for African-American women to reduce HIV risk behaviors. She is also collaborating with colleagues in CHSR to study the impact of collocating drug and alcohol counselors in child welfare offices.
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Philip McCallion
Philip McCallion, Ph.D. ACSW, is Professor in the School of Social Welfare at the University at Albany, a Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholar and Mentor, and Director of the Institute for Social Services Research and Development. Within the newly formed institute, Dr. McCallion directs the Center for Excellence in Aging Services and the NIDA-funded Child Welfare, Drug Abuse and Intergenerational Risk Research Center. Dr. McCallion's research is focused on care giving issues, particularly the interaction of informal care with formal services, collaboration across service systems, and the experiences of multi-cultural families. His work has included evaluation of non-pharmacological interventions for persons with dementia, the development of innovative demonstration projects designed to maintain aging persons with intellectual disabilities in the community, and system design work on creating aging prepared communities.
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Cristina Mogro-Wilson
Cristina Mogro-Wilson is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Social Welfare, University at Albany. She expects to graduate this May. At the University at Albany, Cristina worked for the Child Welfare, Drug Abuse and Intergenerational Risk Research Center where she was involved in projects including agency collaboration in substance use and child welfare agencies and substance use intervention research with Latino adults. Cristina is an associate for the Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities at the University at Albany. She also has received a NIDA pre-doctoral fellowship to be part of the National Hispanic Science Network. Her dissertation focuses on substance use in adolescence with a particular focus on Latino family mechanisms. Upon graduation she will accept a full-time position as Assistant Professor in the School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut. Cristina is currently working as the Research Director for the Center for Developmental Disabilities at the University of Connecticut.
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Julie Novkov
Julie Novkov has been an Associate Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies at the University at Albany since fall 2006. Previously, she was an Assistant, then Associate, Professor at the University of Oregon, where she also served as the Director of Women’s and Gender Studies from 2004-2006. Novkov is the author of Racial Union: Law, Intimacy, and the White State in Alabama, 1865-1954 (forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press in January 2008) and Constituting Workers, Protecting Women: Gender, Law, and Labor in the Progressive Era and New Deal Years (University of Michigan Press 2001), as well as numerous articles and book chapters concerning the legal construction of subordinated identity and constitutional development in the United States. She also served on and chaired the American Political Science Association’s Committee on the Status of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and the Transgendered in the Profession from 2003-2006. TOP
Blanca M. Ramos
Dr. Blanca M. Ramos (Ph.D.; LMSW) is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Welfare and holds an affiliate appointment in the Department of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies at the University at Albany. She is Director of the Education Core for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities. Her scholarly interests are centered on multiculturalism, gerontology, substance use, international social work, and domestic violence, with a focus on U.S. Latinos. Dr. Ramos has extensive experience as a practitioner and community organizer. Her international works includes partnership building with higher education institutions and communities in Peru. TOP
Jacquelyn Roberts
Jacquelyn Roberts graduated from the Yale University School of Drama and is currently an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University at Albany. Her paper developed out a trend she has seen through her work as an actor or playwright in theatres as varied as the Crossroads Theatre Company, Arena Stage, South Coast Repertory, where she received a Southern California Theatre Critics Award, the Mark Taper Forum, and Sundance Playwriting Festival. Her critique of these plays comes from her belief that theatre should be produced keeping in mind the character’s representational value in a political context. Jackie believes that using this form enables one to more effectively convey the illogical nature of racism. TOP
William Roth
William Roth, Associate Professor of Social Welfare and Public Policy at the University at Albany, is one of the founders of America’s Disability Rights movement. It is a measure of the success of the movement that Roth helped found that, slowly but surely, the architectural, transportation, and telecommunications barriers are coming down in America. He is coauthor of The Unexpected Minority and “The Grand Illusion: Stigma, Role Expectations, and Communication.” These “landmark” studies are widely acknowledged to have helped provide the analytical basis for the disability rights movement as well as helping to foster the rise of a new academic discipline, Disabilities Studies. In his numerous subsequent books and articles Roth emphasizes the movement’s core vision: many of the most socially incapacitating aspects of disability are not the inescapable consequences of biology but the unintended result of countless social decisions that result in a man-made world that takes into account the needs of people with normal bodies and inadvertently discriminates against people whose bodies are different. Disability is as much a social construction as a biological fact. TOP
Nadia Rubaii-Barrett
Nadia Rubaii-Barrett, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Public Administration in the College of Community and Public Affairs at University at Binghamton. Her research has focused on a range of issues related to government responses to diversity, including the management of cultural diversity within public workplaces, the intergovernmental aspects of immigration policies, and accessibility issues for diverse populations associated with government’s increasing reliance on technology. For several years, she chaired the Diversity Committee of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, and her work with the U.S.-Mexico Border Counties Coalition resulted in a report that was used to lobby Congress for policy change.
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Lawrence M. Schell
Lawrence M. Schell, a Professor in the Department of Anthropology and in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, is the Director of the Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities and the Associate Dean for Research of the College of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on the growth and development of children, particularly the effects of pollutants on children from disadvantaged groups. In an anthropological framework, his research concerns adaptation, or lack thereof, to urbanism. Corollary themes of his work are the role of socio-cultural factors in child health and use of partnership research methodology in studies of disadvantaged groups. His most recent research has been conducted with the Akwesasne Mohawk community on the St. Lawrence River. Recent publications concern the effects of pollutants on adolescent growth and maturation. Other publications concern effects of lead, noise, and psychosocial stress and support on child development. He received his Ph.D. in biological anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and his B.A. from Oberlin College.
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Kelly Secovnie
Kelly Secovnie is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English at the University at Albany. Her research interests include Anglophone West African drama, African-American drama, transatlantic and diasporic studies, postcolonial, critical race and feminist theory, and interdisciplinary studies. Recently, she wrote an article titled “Cultural Translation Ama Ata Aidoo’s The Dilemma of a Ghost and Osonye Tess Onwueme’s The Missing Face” published in the Journal of African Literature and Culture (March 2007). TOP
Leonard A. Slade, Jr.
Leonard A. Slade, Jr., is Professor of Africana Studies, Adjunct Professor of English, Chair of the Department of Africana Studies, Director of the Doctor of Arts in Humanistic Studies Program, and Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program at the University at Albany. In April 2005, he was named a Collins Fellow at the University at Albany He has published fifteen books, including eleven books of poetry: Another Black Voice: A Different Drummer (1988), The Beauty of Blackness (1989), I Fly Like a Bird (1992), The Whipping Song (1993), Vintage (1995), Fire Burning (1995), Pure Light (1996), Neglecting the Flowers (1997), Lilacs in Spring (1998), Elisabeth and Other Poems (1999), and For the Love of Freedom (2000). Symbolism in Herman Melville's Moby Dick: From the Satanic to the Divine (1998) is his second book of literary criticism. Jazz After Dinner, his twelfth volume of poetry, was published by the State University of New York Press in July 2006. A past member of the National Research Center on the Teaching of Literature, he has been the recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award at the University at Albany and the Professor of the Year Award from the SUNY NAACP Chapter. In 2006, the Master's Program in Africana Studies was ranked number two in America.
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Patricia Strach
Patricia Strach is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Administration and Policy at the University at Albany. Her teaching and research interests include public policy, American political development, and gender and politics. Professor Strach is the author of All in the Family: The Private Roots of American Public Policy (Stanford 2007) and, with Ken Goldstein, the editor of The Medium and the Message: Television and American Elections (Prentice Hall 2003). She received her doctorate in political science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
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Kathleen Sullivan
Kathleen Sullivan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Her research interests include constitutional interpretation and American political development. Her book, Constitutional Context: Women and Rights Discourse in Nineteenth-Century America (Johns Hopkins University Press), places women’s struggles to liberate themselves from the common-law doctrine of coverture into the larger development of the form of rights discourse in American politics and law. Her current research interests involve a study of race and the development of the police powers in the nineteenth century and a study of the role of non-state actors that the state employs in governance. She received her Ph.D. in Government from the University of Texas at Austin, her M.A. from the University of Toronto, and her B.A. from Colgate University.
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Veronica Treadwell
Veronica Treadwell holds both a Bachelor's and Master's of Social Work degree from the University at Buffalo. She specializes in Community Welfare and Program Development. She is a tribal enrolled member of the Unkechaug Nation and is the daughter of Chief Lone Otter, author and tribal Historian. Veronica, following in her fathers’ footsteps, has dedicated herself to the uplifting of her people through the development and implementation of programs which improve community education, housing, and health-related issues, particularly among low-income Native American families. She has approximately 20 years of experience in the human services field and has worked with numerous population groups. Veronica is currently working with the University at Stony Brook’s School of Social Welfare and Long Island Community Foundation on conducting a comprehensive assets and needs assessment of the Unkechaug Nation. She also works for the Peconic Community Council as the Director of the Housing Counseling Program. And finally, in her spare time, she administers a New York State Community Block Grant as the Fiscal Consultant for the Unkechaug Nation.
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Lynn A. Warner
Dr. Lynn A. Warner is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Welfare, University at Albany, and is also Co-Director of the Addictions Research Center at the University. The research center is a multidisciplinary initiative with faculty in the Department of Psychology dedicated to teaching and research on addictions across the lifespan. Dr. Warner received a Ph.D. (1998) from the joint doctoral program in social work and sociology at the University of Michigan. She also received an MSW from Michigan and an MPP from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Other research and training experiences include a National Institute for Mental Health pre-doctoral fellowship at the Institute for Social Research (University of Michigan) and postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research (Rutgers University). Dr. Warner’s research area is behavioral health epidemiology and policy, with a focus on ways to redress inequities in service delivery for people with co-occurring substance use disorders and physical and psychiatric problems. A current project investigates providers’ roles in effective management of psychotropic medication regimens for persons who are also drinking or using illicit drugs. TOP
Stacy Williams
Dr. Stacy Williams joined the University at Albany faculty in 2005 as an assistant professor in the School of Education’s School Psychology program. Her research interests include identifying environmental factors that can aid in the achievement of African-American students, determining if high stakes assessment motivate or alienate African-American students from achieving, developing appropriate reading interventions for all students, and deconstructing the achievement paradox in the African-American community.
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