I am never satisfied with a single viewpoint or piece of data. This is something my wife has continued to endure. At Gonzaga I was a double major in Criminal Justice and Psychology, and I was able to encounter a variety of social science perspectives. My professors and courses delved into discussions of the structure of law enforcement, examinations of social psychological theories of bystander intervention, as well as principles of behavioral and positive psychology. These lessons shaped my intellectual interests and pursuit of further academic education and research.
"I recently defended my dissertation, which illustrates how I was able to leverage the knowledge base I built at Gonzaga in my graduate studies."
When I graduated in 2011 and prepared to start my PhD program in Criminal Justice, I felt both prepared and divided. I did not want to relegate myself to a single focus or research area, abandoning all of the topics and ideas that did not conform to a particular scientific view. While my undergraduate research experience in the field of policing sparked my path towards graduate school, I knew that I wanted to incorporate my education in psychology into my research.
Ultimately, I worked on a variety of different and engaging research projects while at John Jay College, CUNY. I examined how police departments construct the ideal candidate in their recruitment materials, coded open-source data concerning extremist incidents in the United States, and extended my prior work at Gonzaga to explore police participation in social networking. I recently defended my dissertation, which illustrates how I was able to leverage the knowledge base I built at Gonzaga in my graduate studies. My dissertation concerns predicting college students’ willingness to report campus crimes. I evaluate the relative influence of two theories of social psychology, one focusing on situational factors and the other on an individual’s perceptions of the police. I am now starting my work as an Assistant Professor at the State University of New York, Fredonia in an inter-disciplinary department with colleagues in the fields of social work, anthropology, sociology, and criminology. I am excited to share both what I have learned and to shape the intellectual curiosity of my students in this dynamic environment.