Rate My Professor Tia Andersen

Andersen’s scholarship focuses on feminist criminology and intersectionality, using qualitative and mixed-methods research to examine how exclusionary school discipline, juvenile justice policies, and structural inequalities affect youth pathways, particularly for those removed to alternative schools. Her studies address the roles of gender, race, trauma, and place in school-to-prison pipelines and the potential of mentoring to foster resilience and positive youth development. Select publications include “Rural-Urban Differences in Bullying Perpetration and Victimization Using a National Sample” (2025, Journal of Rural Mental Health, with E. Crouch and H. Smith), “Being a Mentor in the Digital Era: An Exploratory Study of the Benefits Undergraduate Student Mentors Derived from Providing Virtual Mentoring to Youth” (2023, Journal of Community Psychology, with H. Wellen), “Adverse Childhood Experiences and Positive Childhood Experiences among United States Military Children” (2023, Military Medicine, with E. Crouch and H. Smith), and “Coaching and Doping: A Test of Situational Action Theory” (2023, Journal of Drug Issues, with S. Masoomeh et al.). She has obtained major grants, such as a $403,569 National Science Foundation award (2023-2026) as Principal Investigator for research on mentoring’s disruption of the school-to-prison pipeline. Since 2017, Andersen has founded and directed the Adolescent Mentoring service-learning course (WGST 551/CRJU 551), training and matching over 550 university students with expelled high school youth to promote strengths-based interventions and social justice.