Mike Males, Principal Investigator / Content Director

Mike Males, Ph.D., social ecology, University of California, Irvine, 1999, author of four books on American youth (including Framing Youth: Ten Myths about the Next Generation and The Scapegoat Generation: America’s War on Adolescents), serves as senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. He taught sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for five years and published articles in Scribner's Encyclopedia on Violence in America, The Lancet, American Journal of Public Health, Journal of School Health, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times, among others.

 

 

BOARD OF ADVISORS          (under construction)

 

Richard Farson, Ph.D., psychologist, author, lecturer, and educator, is president of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute (WBSI), an independent, nonprofit organization he helped found in La Jolla, California, devoted to research, education and advanced study in human affairs. He heads the development of WBSI’s pioneering International Leadership Forum, an Internet-based think tank composed of influential leaders from business, government, academia, science, journalism, literature and the arts, addressing great policy issues of our time. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed bestseller, Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership, now in twelve languages, and the more recently published with co-author Ralph Keyes, Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins: The Paradox of Innovation. An article based on this book won the McKinsey award for the best Harvard Business Review article published in 2002. He has had a long-time involvement with civil rights issues marked by his 1969 Look Magazine article, “The Rage of Women,” and his 1974 book, “Birthrights:  A Bill of Rights for Children.” each of which was the first to bring to a national audience the need for legislative and policy reform.

 

Steven Mintz, Ph.D., the John and Rebecca Moores Professor of History at the University of Houston, is the author or editor of 13 books, including Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood, which received major awards from the Association of American Publishers and the Organization of American Historians. He is President Elect of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, an international professional organization of scholars who study the history of childhood and adolescence, and National Co-Chair of the Council on Contemporary Families, an organization of leading academics and clinicians dedicated to enhancing the national conversation on America’s diverse families.

 

Herb Childress, Ph.D., the Director of Undergraduate Curriculum at the Boston Architectural College.  He has studied young people’s places and politics for over 15 years, and has worked to involve young people in design decisions with many professional clients.  His book  (2000, SUNY Press) is a careful examination of the ways in which teenagers make use of and make decisions about their built environments, from school to home to the community.  He has published widely on youth and education research in academic and professional journals.  Since 2005, he has also been a member of the Executive Board and Chair of the Social Science Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research, an academic organization that works to create significant research opportunities for undergraduate students and their faculty mentors.   Dr. Childress has a Ph.D. in Environment-Behavior Studies from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, where he was named a Graduate of the Last Decade in 2004. 

 

Karen Sternheimer, Ph.D., sociology, University of Southern California, is the author of Kids These Days: Facts and Fictions About Today’s Youth (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) and It’s Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture’s Influence on Children (Westview Press, 2003). She currently teaches in the sociology department at the University of Southern California, where her research focuses on issues related to popular culture and youth. Specific topics of inquiry have included concerns about youth violence, kidnapping, substance use, child obesity, teen driving, and fears about the effects of media on children. Her current research projects involve a study of youth in urban Los Angeles, as well as a study of American celebrity culture. Her work has been presented at professional conferences, and her commentary has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and the San Jose Mercury News. Additionally, she has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, The O’Reilly Factor, The History Channel, the Fox Morning News and numerous radio programs. Her work has been discussed in USA Today, Variety, the Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury News, Child, Ladies’ Home Journal, and other publications worldwide. She also earned a master’s degree in psychology and a bachelor of fine arts degree in drama.

Elizabeth Birr Moje, Ph.D., is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture in Educational Studies and a Faculty Affiliate in Latina/o Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.  She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in secondary and adolescent literacy, cultural theory, and research methods and serves as a Faculty Associate in the University’s Institute for Social Research—Research Center for Group Dynamics.  Her research interests revolve around the intersection between the literacies and texts youth are asked to learn in the disciplines (particularly in science and social studies) and the literacies and texts they experience outside of school. Moje has written one book, co-edited two others, and written numerous articles in journals such as the Reading Research Quarterly, Teachers College Record, Journal of Literacy Research, Review of Research in Education, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Urban Review, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, and Science Education.  Her research projects have been or are currently funded by the National Institutes of Health, Office of Vocational and Adult Education, the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and International Reading Association, and the National Academy of Education.  Moje sits on the Commission on Reading Research and the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Adolescent Literacy Council and is now Research Chair of the National Conference on Research on Language and Literacy (NCRLL).  She is a co-editor of the forthcoming Handbook of Reading Research, Volume IV.

 

Personnel

Sibley, Christine, Website Project Leader