Faculty

Dr. Eileen M. Ahlin is an associate professor of criminal justice in the School of Public Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg. She joined the faculty in 2013 after 15 years with a private corporation, where she conducted criminal justice research at the federal, state, and local levels. Her teaching and research interests include violence, neighborhood effects, corrections, research methods, and criminological theory.

Dr. Shaun Gabbidon is the author of more than 100 scholarly publications. The recipient of numerous awards, Dr. Gabbidon was awarded the 2015 Julius Debro Award for outstanding service and the 2016 Outstanding Teaching Award, both from the Division on People of Color and Crime of the American Society of Criminology. He teaches course in the areas of race, ethnicity, and crime; research methods; and private security administration.

Dr. Jennifer Gibbs' research interests focus on policing topics, including violence against police, public attitudes toward police, diversity in recruitment and retention, and terrorism. Notably, her work on social distance and attitudes toward police, co-authored with Dr. Jonathan Lee, was recognized in the 2016 Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence. At Penn State World Campus, Dr. Gibbs typically teaches courses on policing (CRIMJ 210: Policing in America; CRIMJ 408: Police Administration) and ethics (CRIMJ 465: Ethics in Criminal Justice).

Dr. Don Hummer is co-author/editor of The Culture of Prison Violence, Handbook of Police Administration, and the forthcoming The Technology Revolution in Criminal Justice. His work, focused primarily on offender treatment and control, has appeared in peer-reviewed outlets such as Aggression and Violent Behavior, Probation Journal, Law & Policy, and The Prison Journal.

Dr. Jonathan Lee is an associate professor of criminal justice at Penn State Harrisburg's School of Public Affairs. He specializes in quantitative research on sociology and psychology of deviance, police-public relations, and police decision-making. He is associate editor of International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, a consultant to Dauphin County DA's Office and police agencies, and principal investigator of criminal justice projects funded by U.S. Department of Justice.

Dr. Siyu Liu is an instructor of criminal justice undergraduate courses (e.g., Policing in America and Ethics in Criminal Justice). She also conducts research in comparative criminal justice (comparing China and the United States), juvenile justice, and policing. Her work has been published in leading criminological journals, such as the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Criminal Justice Policy Review, and Criminal Justice and Behavior. Dr. Liu, an active member of a group of Chinese criminologists in the United States, has been presenting her research in more than eight prestigious universities in China.

Dr. Jennifer L. Schally joined the faculty at Penn State Harrisburg in 2014 after earning her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Tennessee. Her research interests are mainly in green criminology and crimes by the powerful, including harms to nonhuman animals. She regularly teaches courses in criminology and race and crime. Dr. Schally’s work has appeared in the Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, the American Journal of Community Psychology, and the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. Her book, Legitimizing Corporate Harm: The Discourse of Agribusiness, was published by Palgrave in 2018.

Dr. Emily R. Strohacker is an assistant professor of criminal justice in the School of Public Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg. She has teaching experience in a variety of criminological courses, such as Introduction to Criminal Justice, Ethics in Criminal Justice, Criminology, Sociology of Murder, and Deviant Behaviors. She is an active researcher in the areas of criminology, deviance, and victimology, specifically in cyberbullying, cybercrimes, and human trafficking.