Director
Tara Opsal, PhD
Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology
As a sociologist who engages critical and applied criminological questions, Tara focuses on understanding how different systems of formal social control intersect and effect individual and group behavior. In particular, she conducts community-based and mixed methods research that examines the criminal legal system and the consequences of sentencing and correctional policy for, especially, justice-involved women. She has conducted research on community corrections, parole, reentry from prison, foster youth, and bystander programming in the juvenile justice context. Tara is especially committed to working with practitioners in non-profits and government agencies to help bridge the gap that can occur between academic research and on the ground practice. Moreover, through these community-based research efforts she prioritizes space for the voices of those entangled in the legal system to inform process, programming, and policy recommendations. Tara also examines the effects of social control in relationship to environmental laws and regulations. Here, she focuses on examining the factors that shape state response to environmental harm and crime. Her recent work focuses on understanding the ways that prisons produce environmental harms and public health risks that impact the nearby environment, communities, and those who are incarcerated.
Advisory Board
Lauren Alessi, MA
Associate Director, Social Work Research Center
Lauren brings experience working with government, human service agencies, non-profits, and community-based organizations around issues of substance use, criminal justice, and child welfare. She has worked in Colorado as a community educator on opioid misuse and harm reduction; as a program evaluator for human service agencies nationwide working in child support, domestic violence, foster care, and youth homelessness; and as a researcher on the Youth Transitions Project in New Zealand, a longitudinal study of at-risk youth transitioning into adulthood. At the Social Work Research Center at CSU, Lauren works on the evaluation team for the Colorado Kinnected Kinship Navigator project, which was just rated as “promising” by the Families First Prevention Services Clearinghouse. She also works on projects evaluating anti-human trafficking programs in Colorado.
Jessica Elf, PhD
Associate Professor of Epidemiology, Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences
Jessica’s research focuses on the epidemiology and health impacts of air pollution and tobacco use, with an emphasis on the HIV and tuberculosis (TB) co-epidemic. Her work aims to describe the overlap of air pollution and tobacco with these epidemics and the subsequent impact on TB and HIV health outcomes. In addition to risk characterization, her work focuses on subsequent mitigation strategies and interventions that are effective, sustainable, and collaborative across different fields in public health. Through the integration of environmentally focused epidemiologic studies in these targeted populations, Jessica aims to facilitate and catalyze leaders from fields external to environmental health to champion exposure reduction through the lens of their own public health interests. Furthermore, she strives to build capacity and generate quality research that motivates policy and sustainable programs to improve health at the individual, district, country, and global level.
Jessie Harney, PhD
Assistant Professor of Public Policy & Administration, Department of Political Science
Jessie is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Her research interests are in justice system reform, with much of her work focusing on: 1) how to improve the mental health of frontline workers in these systems; 2) understanding how the well-being of frontline workers impacts service delivery to system-impacted populations; and 3) understanding how to improve the well-being of system-impacted individuals and families through specific, direct services or policies. Her previous publications have appeared in journals such as Criminal Justice & Behavior, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Social Policy & Administration, and Crime & Delinquency.
Jeffrey Nowacki, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Jeff’s research focuses broadly on social responses to crime, specifically addressing how policy changes and social context influence criminal justice system behavior. He has worked extensively with data from the United States Sentencing Commission to explore disparities and inequalities in criminal sentencing, specifically around indicators of social location (e.g., race, sex, age) and aggregate-level social context characteristics (e.g., measures of disadvantage, gender equality, political climate, and racial composition). His previous projects on political context and sentencing and immigration sentencing have resulted in a variety of peer-reviewed publications in academic journals such as the Crime & Delinquency, the British Journal of Criminology, Police Quarterly, Feminist Criminology, and Policing: An International Journal.
Victoria Terranova, PhD
Associate Professor, Criminology and Criminal Justice University of Northern Colorado
Prior to joining the University of Northern Colorado in 2016, she received her PhD in Criminal Justice from Texas State University. She has conducted research on pretrial risk assessment, group offending, corrections, offender reentry and recidivism. Her work has been published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals including the: Journal of School Violence, Journal of Community Corrections, Federal Probation, Criminal Justice & Behavior and Violence and Gender. During her time at UNCO, Victoria has also served as a sponsored research fellow (2018-2020). She also serves an active role in the UNCO Criminology & Criminal Justice Master’s program in both teaching and student research mentorship. She has chaired a variety of graduate and undergraduate student theses, as well as collaborated with Criminology & Criminal Justice graduate students on local and statewide funded research projects.
Project Manager
Anne Uhlman, MA
PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology
Anne is a professional mental health counselor and doctoral student researcher. She has provided evidence-based mental health care in prisons and jails, problem-solving courts, and community reentry programs through a number of treatment modalities. In her research, Anne explores abolition alternatives to incarceration by collaborating with diverse stakeholders, including justice-involved individuals and their families, to gain a deeper understanding of how impacted communities experience the criminal justice system. Her work has been published in journals such as Critical Criminology and Journal of Mental Health, and she was named a Doctoral Fellow of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in 2024. Anne is dedicated to ensuring that research is not only relevant and accessible to a broad audience, but also instrumental in advancing more equitable and effective justice practices.