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Paul Smokowski, Ph.D., M.S.W., C.P., is a Professor in the University of Kansas’s School of Education. He has an interdisciplinary background in social welfare, child development, and public health. Before joining KU, Dr. Smokowski was a faculty member at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for 16 years. His past 15 years of work in youth violence prevention culminated in the North Carolina Youth Violence Prevention Center (NC-YVPC), a nonprofit agency specializing in helping rural communities promote healthy youth development that Dr. Smokowski directs. Dr. Smokowski’s research teams have procured more than $15 million worth of federal funding from the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute of Justice, and the National Institutes of Health. As a prolific author, he has published more than 100 articles and book chapters on issues related to risk, resilience, acculturation, adolescent mental health, family stress, and youth violence prevention. Dr.Smokowski has received national awards for his youth violence prevention research, such as the 2010 Collaborator’s Award from the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama and the best article of the year award from the Society for Social Work Research. He served on the National Institutes of Health’s Youth Violence Consortium and was a member of the inaugural class of Health Protection Research Awardees funded by the Center for Disease Control’s Office of the Director. Dr. Smokowski directed the Latino Acculturation and Health Project, a multisite longitudinal study examining youth violence risk and protective factors in Latino youth, and the Entre Dos Mundos/Between Two Worlds program for helping Latino immigrant families cope with acculturation stressors. This research program culminated in Dr. Smokowski’s previous book published by New York University Press titled Becoming Bicultural: Risk and Resilience in Latino Youth. In his current work, Dr. Smokowski is guiding the implementation and evaluation of a multilevel youth violence prevention initiative in one of the most ethnically diverse rural counties in the United States.

Caroline B. R. Evans, Ph.D., is adjunct faculty at Rhode Island College and works on a community violence prevention grant based in Tucson, AZ. Prior to this work Dr. Evans was a research associate for the North Carolina Youth Violence Prevention Center (NC-YVPC). In this role, she helped run a youth violence prevention program funded by the National Institute of Justice and worked to disseminate research findings through conference presentations and publications. Dr. Evans graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2015 with her doctorate in social work, and during her academic tenure worked for the NC-YVPC on a youth violence prevention grant funded by the Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Evans’s research focuses on youth violence, specifically childhood and adolescent bullying victimization and perpetration, bystander behavior, and aggression. She is particularly interested in youth violence prevention through evidence based programs.