SSRC - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Project Manager
- Division / Research Staff
- Research Staff / Project Manager
Amanda Tullos serves as a project manager within the MSU Social Science Research Center. In this role, she collaborates alongside P-20 institutions and organizations to support education, research, and economic development. She also co-leads the MS Education Policy Fellowship Program in partnership with the Institute for Educational Leadership. Formerly, Tullos was the Director of the SOCSD/MSU Partnership School and Education Liaison in the MSU Office of Research and Economic Development. Throughout her career, Tullos has worked with students, teachers, parents, and community partners to strengthen educational opportunities in Mississippi at the school, district, and state level. Prior to this role, Tullos worked as the Starkville Oktibbeha School District's community and parent liaison and as literacy curriculum and intervention specialist. From 2014-2017, she was project manager at MSU's Research and Curriculum Unit overseeing efforts with the Mississippi Department of Education in secondary education, special education, school improvement, and work-based learning. Before moving to Starkville, she was an administrator in the Clinton Public School District and began her career in education teaching in New Orleans.
Job Titles:
- Research Professor and Associate Director
Biography
Since 1994, Dr. Robertson has been conducting multi-site and longitudinal research on adolescents and adults with behavioral health problems and involvement in the justice system. She has been the Principal Investigator (PI) on five National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded projects that targeted individual-level risk behaviors, including HIV/STI risk reduction, and behavioral change interventions. She was also the PI of the MSU Research Center of the NIDA funded Juvenile Justice Translational Research on Interventions for Adolescents in the Legal System (JJ-TRIALS) Cooperative Research Initiative, a multi-site, multi-research center implementation intervention initiative charged with bolstering the ability of juvenile justice agencies to address unmet client needs related to substance use while enhancing inter-organizational relationship between juvenile justice and local behavioral health partners. Dr. Robertson is an expert on the mental health service needs of justice-involved youth. Before coming to Mississippi State University, she worked in community mental health and substance use treatment for 16 years. She developed and directed the ARK, the first state funded residential substance abuse treatment program for adolescents in Mississippi. Beginning in 2000, she conducted state funded studies that a) documented the prevalence of mental health and substance use disorders among incarcerated youth in Mississippi, b) evaluated the provision of training and technical assistance to juvenile detention centers to promote the adoption of a tool for juvenile screening and the linkage to care for youth in need of suicide prevention and other mental health services, and c) monitored juvenile detention center compliance with several state laws that resulted from her research. Another area of research focus is recidivism. Since 2007, Dr. Robertson and her Research and Development team conduct research and program evaluation of MASEP with the aim of reducing DUI recidivism (i.e., a subsequent arrest for impaired driving). This work has resulted in revisions to the MASEP curriculum and the offender assessment as well as a gender-specific model for recidivism prediction. Dr. Robertson has also developed methods for measuring recidivism among youth involved in the juvenile justice system. Additionally, she is a member of the SSRC's Evaluation and Research Group. Dr. Robertson has published in Implementation Science, Child Abuse & Neglect, Journal of American College Health, Journal of Applied Measurement, American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, Health Education and Behavior, Substance Use & Misuse, Criminal Justice and Behavior, AIDS Education and Prevention, Journal of Adolescent Health, Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, and Accident Analysis and Prevention.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Director for MASEP Operations
- Director for Operations for the Mississippi Alcohol Safety Education Program
- Division
Billy Brister serves as Director for Operations for the Mississippi Alcohol Safety Education Program (MASEP). His duties include overseeing the day-to-day operations of fifty-five schools at forty-seven locations across the state of Mississippi and the MASEP central office. He is responsible for long-range planning for the MASEP program and monitoring legislation that could impact the program.. He also works with various state agencies, law enforcement agencies, and municipal and justice courts. He assists with training for MASEP instructional staff and with programs conducted by the Mississippi Judicial College for judicial personnel. In addition, He is a member of the Mississippi Association of Highway Safety Leaders (MAHSL). He is currently serving on the board of directors of Sobriety Trained Officers Representing Mississippi (STORM). Prior to joining MASEP in October 2004, Brister had over 25 years of service with the Mississippi Highway Patrol.
Job Titles:
- Division
- Field Specialist for the Mississippi Alcohol Safety Education Program
Blythe McCance serves as an Alcohol Field Specialist for the Mississippi Alcohol Safety Education Program (MASEP). Her duties include serving as a liaison between the MASEP office and various state agencies, law enforcement agencies and municipal and justice courts as well as the MASEP schools. She assists with training for MASEP instructional staff and with programs conducted by the Mississippi Judicial College for judicial personnel. In addition, she assists with the DUI Enforcement Project and is a member of the Mississippi Association of Highway Safety Leaders (MAHSL). Prior to joining MASEP in June, 2007, McCance worked as an outreach coordinator in the mental health and addiction services field. McCance also has an EdD from Argosy University in Sarasota, Florida in Counseling Psychology and is licensed in Mississippi as a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC).
Job Titles:
- Division / Research Staff
- Project Manager at Mississippi State University 's
- Research Staff / Project Manager
Bradley Long is a Project Manager at Mississippi State University's Social Science Research Center. Bradley has worked with various units and projects at the SSRC, including the Family & Children Research Unit, Systems Change Lab, Project ECHO for Childcare Providers, Project ECHO for Early Childhood Professionals. His work includes communication & outreach, session coordination and facilitation, program evaluation, research and publications, data and inventory management, and more.
Bradley is passionate about education and has worked to promote learning in the earliest stages through working with families, healthcare providers, and childcare center directors and teachers. He has also managed the Advanced STEM Summer Preparatory Program for the Global Teaching Project, which provides resources, course content, and instruction to schools and school districts in Mississippi.
Bradley has also worked as a Bilingual Staffing Coordinator to serve the community as a translator and coordinate job placements. After years of working with underserved and vulnerable groups, his efforts continue to include projects that will improve health, education, and social outcomes for Mississippi's populations.
Long's work is supported in part by MAFES.
Biography
Brenna Jungers, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Mississippi State University. Dr. Jungers is an environmental and natural resource economist whose research is motivated by questions of natural resource management in an era of unprecedented environmental change. Her current projects include a behavioral impact analysis of a novel, incentive-based mechanism for invasive species control, as well as an investigation of nonprofit sector resilience in the wake of climate disasters.
Job Titles:
- Project Manager
- Division / Research Staff
- Research Staff / Project Manager
Callie Poole serves as a Project Manager within the Systems Change Lab at the Social Science Research Center (SSRC) and is currently working on projects focused on early childhood care and development funded by the Mississippi Department of Human Services and by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. In addition to her research contributions, Callie provides leadership and backbone support for the statewide Mississippi Early Childhood Development Coalition and serves as a Transitions Committee member of the Statewide Interagency Coordinating Council.
At the SSRC, Callie has worked on several other projects. From 2018 to 2022, she was part of the Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA)-funded Child Health and Development Project: Mississippi Thrive!, a cooperative agreement with the University of Mississippi Medical Center's Children's of Mississippi. The project goal was to improve Mississippi's early childhood developmental health system, particularly for young children from birth to age five. Callie served as a co-leader for this project's Networking Coordination workgroup and was a member of the project's Outreach, Policy Research, and Centralized Intake & Referral System workgroups. Callie was also part of the Mississippi KIDS COUNT research and development team, an Annie E. Casey-funded program that provides policy-relevant data about the well-being of children in Mississippi, from 2018 to 2022. Callie's past projects also include working on the evaluation team for the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi, which provides technical assistance to schools around the state in implementing effective and sustainable school wellness councils as part of the Mississippi Healthy Students Act of 2007, and Mississippi's Market Rate Survey project, which helps determine the market rate of child care and is funded by the Mississippi Department of Human Services.
Callie holds a B.A. in psychology from Millsaps College with minors in English and business and a concentration in human services. She also holds an M.A. in education from Prescott College with a concentration in cultural studies. Before coming to the SSRC, Callie worked in children's behavioral health and early childhood and elementary education.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor and Founder the Community
Carol Cutler White is an assistant professor and founder the Community College Advocacy Lab in the department of Educational Leadership. White's research focuses on higher education and post-secondary attainment. White is PI on the state's GEAR UP grant, collaborating with school districts in Mississippi to impact high school students' transition to college. White is collaborating with the SSRC to collect evaluation data and conduct research about the impact of the GEAR UP project and the implementation of virtual reality field trips on college campuses.
Job Titles:
- Administration / Systems Administrator
- Division / Administration
Job Titles:
- Division / Research Staff
- Project Director and Research Fellow
- Research Staff / Project Director
Colleen Stouffer serves as Project Director and Research Fellow for the Social Science Research Center since 2008. Stouffer has conducted research on the social determinants of health among minority and vulnerable populations - with a particular focus on childhood overweight and obesity prevention, physical fitness, health education, and program evaluation. Her publications have appeared in journals such as the Journal of School Health, Journal of Health Disparities Research & Practice, Journal of Pediatric Nursing, and Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association. She was Project Director for the Public Data Safety Lab (PSDL) which was established in 2007 in partnership with the Mississippi Office of Highway Safety. The lab in part assisted the State of Mississippi in meeting its Highway Safety Performance Plan by collecting, accessing, and investigating fact-based traffic safety records data (2014-2015). Stouffer was the PI on the Project Fit America Evaluation funded by Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi Foundation (2012-2014). Currently, she works with the Kellogg Data Project (since 2014) and the Office of Tobacco Control Unit (since 2016) as a program evaluator.
Stouffer's work is supported in part by MAFES.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director for Policy Research
- Associate Director of the Social Science Center for Policy Studies
Dr. Baird-Thomas is the Associate Director of the Social Science Center for Policy Studies and Director of the Evaluation Research Group, which offers a range of evaluation and research support services to local, state, and national organizations. Dr. Baird-Thomas received her undergraduate degree from Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, MS. She began her graduate studies at Washington University, St. Louis in the areas of Sociology and Criminology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Mississippi State University. Dr. Baird-Thomas's primary interests include program evaluation, early childhood, and public health. She is currently leading the Mississippi Data Project, which provides data and research for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and its grantees. She also is the primary researcher for the performance evaluation component of the Preschool Development Grant Birth-5 (PDGB-5) of the Mississippi Department of Human Services. In the area of program evaluation, Dr. Baird-Thomas has over 15 years of experience and has been either the lead evaluator or co-investigator for numerous program evaluations. Recent evaluation efforts include: "Aim for Change Evaluation" Mississippi State University Extension Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Fatherhood Initiative of the Healthy Families Mississippi home visiting program (Mississippi Department of Human Services); Health Help Mississippi (Mississippi Health Advocacy Program); Mississippi Delta Health Collaborative (Mississippi State Department of Health/CDC); and Mississippi TRIALS Research Center (National Institutes of Health). Dr. Baird-Thomas's research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Mississippi State Department of Health, the Mississippi Department of Human Services, and the Mississippi Health Advocacy program. Her work has been published in Health and Justice, Evaluation and Program Planning, the Journal of Adolescent Health, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and Criminal Justice and Behavior. She is a current member of the American Evaluation Association.
Job Titles:
- Director of Academic Quality and Professor
- Professor of Mathematics
Dana Franz is professor of Mathematics teacher education in the Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education department and Director of Academic Quality at MSU. Franz's research focuses on mathematics teacher education, including rural teacher education, and she is co-PI on the Teacher Preparation for Rural STEM Teacher Persistence grant, funded by the National Science Foundation and housed at the SSRC.
Dana Franz, PhD (Texas A&M University), is the Director of Academic Quality in the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness and Professor of Secondary Education, Mathematics in the College of Education. Dr. Franz's research focuses on recruitment and retention of mathematics education teachers and preparation of secondary mathematics teachers. She is currently the Co-PI on the NSF-funded Noyce collaborative research grant Teacher Preparation for Rural Teacher Persistence and Retention (TPR)2, and co-leader of the Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership: A Networked Community of Institutions across the US studying the recruitment and preparation of secondary mathematics educators. Dr. Franz's new appointment to Academic Quality is a direct result of her expertise in teacher professional development and program improvement.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Agricultural Economics at MSU
Daniel Petrolia is professor of Agricultural Economics at MSU where his research focuses on the economics of coastal resources and natural hazards. Petrolia has recently collaborated with the SSRC as coPI on a research study and evaluation of the McGovern-Dole School Meals Program in Africa, funded by the US Department of Agriculture, where he co-led economic analysis of the local and regional impact of the McGovern-Dole program in Burkina Faso, Kenya, and Rwanda.
Job Titles:
- Project Coordinator
- Division / Research Staff
- Research Staff
Daniel Shawl serves as a project coordinator II at Mississippi State University's Social Science Research Center. He began working at the SSRC in the fall of 2021. Shawl coordinates the Research and Development of MASEP, as well as various other projects involving topics such as recidivism, substance abuse, juvenile justice, etc. Shawl earned a B.A. in Anthropology from Mississippi State University in 2017, and an M.A. in Anthropology with a focus on Archaeology from the University of Mississippi in 2021. Prior to his work at the SSRC, Shawl worked as an archaeologist for Mississippi State University for over three years, and worked as a National Park Ranger for the Natchez Trace Parkway. During his career as a student and archaeologist he did extensive research on the early Natchez people and the chronological dating of the construction of their ancient capital. Through his experience in Archaeology and Anthropology, Shawl brings a unique skill set into the Social Science Research Center and the projects he works on.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator, Department of Psychology
Job Titles:
- Research Professor in the Department of Food Science
David Buys is associate extension and research professor in the department of Food Science, Nutrition, and Health Promotion in the College of Ag and Life Sciences at MSU. Buys' research focuses on health promotion and food security. He collaborates with the SSRC on numerous projects related to health communication and health promotion, including vaccine awareness and evaluation of the Aim for Change project focusing on food insecurity and obesity prevention in the Mississippi Delta.
Job Titles:
- Professor, Department of Sociology
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor in the Department of Biology
- Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences
- Program Manager of the ( TPR
Diana Outlaw is an associate professor in the department of Biology at MSU where she conducts research in avian parasitology. She is also the mother of a special needs student which has led to an interest in education research and policy. Outlaw is currently serving as program manager on the Teacher Preparation for Rural STEM Teacher Persistence and Retention, housed at the SSRC, and is quickly becoming a qualitative and quantitative education researcher.
Biography
Diana C. Outlaw is the Program Manager of the (TPR)^2 project and an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Mississippi State University. Her biology research career over the last 20 years has focused on the evolutionary history of New and Old World birds and on diversification in avian malaria parasites. Diana's interest in education began as a personal journey, trying to navigate the world of Special Education in order to help her daughter, now 12. As she became acutely aware of the inequity in educational resources between students with and without disabilities, her biology research began to focus on training university students with disabilities in both field and laboratory techniques. She quickly realized that she needed to reach students with disabilities before they went to college, and is reforming her research to focus on bridging achievement gaps for elementary and middle school children. Diana joined the (TPR)^2 project in September, 2021, and is working on a number of projects involving rural education policies.
Job Titles:
- Director Emeritus
- William L. Giles Distinguished Professor
Job Titles:
- Director
- Administration Director, Social Science Research Center / Professor, Department of Teacher Education and Leadership
- Division / Administration
- Professor
Devon Brenner is a professor of teacher education in the MSU College Education and serves as the director of the Social Science Research Center. For over 20 years, Devon has been conducting research in education policy and practice, with a focus on rural education. Brenner is PI on the NSF TPR2 grant and recently launched the newest SSRC lab, Rural Education Research and Initiatives.
Dr. Devon Brenner, director of the SSRC and professor of teacher education in the College of Education. Brenner's research focuses on rural teacher recruitment and retention and rural education policy. Brenner is PI on the NSF-funded collaborative research grant Teacher Preparation for Rural Teacher Persistence and Retention (TPR)2, a collaboration with 14 rural serving institutions across the US, and recently co-authored the rural teacher education textbook,Teaching in Rural Places: Thriving in Classrooms, Schools and Communities. Brenner coordinates the Mississippi Education Policy Fellowship Program, a state chapter of a national program that trains education leaders to engage in education policy and advocacy and co-edits The Rural Educator, journal of the National Rural Education Association.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Sociology and Research
- Division
Dr. Dustin Brown is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Center. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin.
Prior to joining the faculty at Mississippi State University he was a National Institutes of Aging Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Population Studies Center.
He is a social demographer with research interests in population health, aging and the life course, family demography, and social stratification. His research broadly examines the effects of social inequality and social relationships on adult health outcomes.
His recent research primarily focuses on educational and marital status differences in morbidity, disability, and mortality risk among older adults.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Research Professor
- Social Scientist
Dr. Gina Rico Mendez is an assistant research professor at the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University. She leads applied social science research and evaluation initiatives at the intersection of food systems, governance, and social inclusion. With a systems-thinking approach, her work bridges research and practice to inform policy, support rural development, and advance global food security. She brings over a decade of experience in Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning across U.S. and international contexts, including work on major donor-funded programs. She is also a Fulbright scholar.
As a social scientist at a land-grant university, Dr. Rico Mendez is committed to applied research that informs both policy and practice. She collaborates with the Mississippi Water Resources Research Institute to examine the interactions between agricultural production, natural resource management, and human behavior-supporting the development of more equitable and sustainable resource use strategies in rural communities.
She has led and supported policy analysis, institutional assessments, and adaptive learning initiatives for programs funded by USAID, USDA, HRSA, and the U.S. Department of State. As the former Research and Learning Manager for the USAID-funded Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish, she guided cross-continental research partnerships and supported capacity strengthening for evidence use across Africa and Asia.
Her geographic experience spans Latin America, North America, Africa, and Asia, with research and development efforts in the U.S., Colombia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia. She previously served as Developmental Evaluator and Interim Project Director for USAID's Complexity-Aware Monitoring and Evaluation activity in Colombia, applying adaptive learning tools to inform programming in conflict-affected environments.
Dr. Rico Mendez's work is supported in part by MAFES.
Job Titles:
- Research Professor and Coordinator of Laboratories
Dr. John F. Edwards directs the Survey Research Laboratory (SRL) at the Social Science Research Center. The SRL has been conducting scientifically-based survey research for nearly 40 years. Surveys administered by the SRL cover a broad range of topics such as healthcare, education, behavioral risk factors, children's wellbeing, quality of life, and disaster response. Past and present funders include Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as numerous universities, NGOs, and foundations. The SRL regularly conducts telephone, web, and paper-based surveys. For telephone surveys, the laboratory maintains a state-of-the-art call center with 30 interviewer call stations that utilizes a robust CATI (computer-assisted-telephone-interviewing) system. The data collection projects are based on rigorous sampling methodology. The SRL regularly employs both address-based frames and dual-frame, random-digit-dialing samples that account for cellphone-only households. In addition to his work at the Social Science Research Center, Dr. Edwards has taught courses in Research Methods, Measurement and Evaluation, Behavioral Science Writing, and Personality Theory. Dr. Edwards received a Bachelor's degree in English Literature from Loyola University in New Orleans, a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from the University of New Orleans, a Master's degree in Experimental Psychology from Mississippi State University, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Psychology from Mississippi State University.
Dr. Edwards's work is supported in part by MAFES.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Research Professor
Dr. Katerina Sergi is an Assistant Research Professor at SSRC. She collaborates with SSRC faculty and staff on a variety of projects from early childhood education and mental health awareness and prevention services to tobacco surveillance and evaluation. Her past research contributions have ranged from data collection and management, quantitative and qualitative analysis, to manuscript development, and grant writing. Dr. Sergi is an educational psychologist with a research focus on metacognitive development, self-regulated learning, and motivation.
Job Titles:
- Communications Coordinator
- Administration / Communications Coordinator
- Division / Administration
Emile Creel Pennington is the Communications Coordinator at the SSRC. She works under the supervision of the director to assist the SSRC in aspects of communication, such as newsletters, annual reports, social media management, website updates, and more. Creel completed a Bachelor of Arts in Communication with an emphasis in Public Relations and a minor in Marketing and a Master's degree in Business Administration at MSU.
Job Titles:
- Division / Research Staff
- Research Staff / Senior Research Associate
Emily McClelland is a graduate of Mississippi State University and holds a Master of Science degree in Clinical Psychology. In 2010, McClelland began working for the Social Science Research Center (SSRC) under Dr. Robert McMillen in the Tobacco Control Unit. Since her time at the SSRC, McClelland has advanced to a Senior Research Associate and assists with both surveillance and evaluation services. McClelland is responsible for managing and building surveillance specific datasets for the Tobacco Control Unit as well as running analyses on these data for report and factsheet construction. She is the principal investigator for the Mississippi Youth Tobacco Survey and responsible for coordinating the Mississippi Student Tobacco Survey. McClelland also serves as an external evaluator for the Office of Tobacco Control and for the Mississippi Comprehensive Cancer Control Program. She has presented key findings at several conferences and given numerous presentations for the Mississippi State Department of Health's Office of Tobacco Control. In 2024, McClelland also joined the Evaluation Research Group at the SSRC and assists Dr. Connie Baird-Thomas in the evaluation of the Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B-5). Her research has been published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, the Journal of Public Health in the Deep South, and the Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association.
Job Titles:
- Associate Research Professor and Research Fellow
Dr. Hanna is an Associate Research Professor and Research Fellow for the Social Science Research Center (SSRC), where she directs the Systems Change Lab (SCL). During her time at the SSRC, Dr. Hanna has written, administered, and collaborated on grant projects addressing public policy and system change at the intersection of early childhood health and education. Currently, she serves as Principal Investigator of a Mississippi Department of Human Services-funded project to collect and analyze child care market rates to inform Child Care Payment Program subsidies. This project also funds the maintenance of a set of interactive, early childhood resource maps as a part of the Division of Early Childhood Care and Development Consumer Education platform. Dr. Hanna also serves as Principal Investigator for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation-funded Mississippi Child Care Quality Support System project, on which she partnered with key early childhood organizations across the state to gather child care provider recommendations for a new quality improvement system. She continues to facilitate meetings on this topic among early childhood stakeholders as a part of the Mississippi Preschool Development Grant Birth-Five. Recently, Dr. Hanna served as Co-Principal Investigator on a Health Resources & Services Administration-funded project that was a joint project of the University of Mississippi Medical Center and the SSRC at Mississippi State University. The 5-year, $17.5M Mississippi Thrive project (www.mississippithrive.com) was designed to examine and strengthen the developmental health system for young children in Mississippi, ranging from developmental health promotion, to screening, referral, and treatment. Previously, Dr. Hanna served as Co-Director for Mississippi KIDS COUNT, an Annie E. Casey-funded program that provides policy-relevant data and original research about the health, education, and overall well-being of Mississippi's children. In this role, she partnered with the Center for Population Studies at the University of Mississippi to conduct education, outreach, and research on census participation in the state and served on the governor's 2020 Census Complete Count Committee as the Education Subcommittee Chairperson. Dr. Hanna also worked with the Family and Children's Research Unit (FCRU) at the SSRC, focusing on policy and systems change related to education and health services for Mississippi's children and families. FCRU project were funded by the National Institutes of Health, Center for Mississippi Health Policy, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, among others. Dr. Hanna earned a PhD in public policy and administration and a MS in sociology from Mississippi State University (MSU). She received her undergraduate training in psychology at the University of Mississippi. Dr. Hanna's work is supported in part by MAFES.
Job Titles:
- Project Manager
- Division / Research Staff
- Research Staff / Project Manager
Heather Martin is a Project Manager within the Family and Children Research Unit. She is a part of the Mississippi Thrive! Child Health and Development Project, a joint project of Mississippi State University's Social Science Research Center and the University of Mississippi's Medical Center. Within that project, she promotes the Mind in the Making and Vroom initiatives statewide. Martin has a degree in Psychology from Mississippi State University and a degree in Elementary Education from Blue Mountain College. She has 16 years of teaching experience with the Houston School District, where she was named Teacher of the Year multiple times. With her experience and passion for early childhood development, Martin is excited to be a part of improving the early childhood developmental health system for Mississippi's youngest by communicating with community leaders, educators, healthcare professionals, and caregivers across the state of Mississippi.
Martin's work is supported in part by MAFES.
Holli Seitz, MPH, PhD (University of Pennsylvania), is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Mississippi State University and Director of The Message Laboratory, a communication research laboratory at the MSU Social Science Research Center. As an applied communication researcher, Dr. Seitz's primary research areas are health and science communication, and she specializes in message effects research and survey-based experimentation. Current projects include communication research to inform vaccine education efforts, messages to prevent opioid misuse, and social media messages promoting healthy eating and physical activity. Prior to joining the faculty at Mississippi State University, Dr. Seitz worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on issues related to health communication, social media, and emergency response.
Job Titles:
- Division
- Field Specialist of the Mississippi Alcohol Safety Education Program
Jean Mann currently serves as an Alcohol Field Specialist of the Mississippi Alcohol Safety Education Program (MASEP). These responsibilities include the scheduling of 51 MASEP schools plus ensuring that all Mississippi court systems receive the necessary information to order 1st offender DUI cases to the MASEP classes. Additionally, her responsibilities include creating and maintaining database files, conferring with field staff specialists, MASEP instructional staff, and MASEP research staff and assisting the Operations Coordinator. She is also responsible for the dissemination and upkeep of the technology equipment used in the MASEP classrooms and the updates to the MASEP web page. She has also provided assistance on numerous grants/projects that the SSRC has been involved in including MASEP Curriculum and Development Projects.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate
- Division / Research Staff
- Research Staff / Research Associate III
John McCown serves as a Research Associate III at the Social Science Research Center (SSRC). His research interests include demography, criminology, and urban-rural sociology, with an emphasis on statistical computation and geospatial mapping. During the last 12 years at SSRC, he has worked on a variety of projects as a data analyst, offering expertise in research methods, data management, statistical analyses, and visualization. Before joining SSRC, he was a graduate assistant in the MSU Sociology Department.
McCown's work is supported in part by MAFES.
With support from USAID, CDC, NIH, USDA NIFA, and UN Women, among others, Kathleen Ragsdale uses multi methods to inform interventions and evaluations focused on socioeconomic development, food security, and risk reduction among populations in Belize, Botswana, Costa Rica, Ghana, Mozambique, Panama, U.S., Virgin Islands, and Zambia. She is the Gender Impacts Lead for the Feed the Future Soybean Innovation Lab, Gender and Youth Engagement Lead for the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish.
Dr. Ragsdale's work is supported in part by MAFES.
Job Titles:
- Administration
- Division / Administration
Kathy Wooten has been with the center for over 30 years and currently serves as a Contract and Grant Specialist. She sets up budgets for new awards, account management, data input, maintenance and reconciliation of the Center's network accounting system, closeouts of projects & audits. She is responsible for calculating the LUM and monthly LUM charges. She also is the procard administrator and responsible for Visa distribution, reconciliation, audit management of all Center Visa procurement cards. She is proficient in Banner, Excel, Word, Filemaker, Quattro Pro and Word Perfect and has been IRB certified. She has attended several MBUG conferences and trainings on MSU campus.
Job Titles:
- Administrative Assistant
- Division
Lacey Williams Breen joined the Mississippi Alcohol Safety Education Program (MASEP) as Data Management Assistant. Ms. Breen's various roles for MASEP will include processing enrollment data for the classes statewide. Ms. Breen has a Bachelor of Science in Communication from the Mississippi University for Women.
Job Titles:
- Division / Research Staff
- Manager of the Wolfgang Frese Survey Research Laboratory
- Research Staff / Project Coordinator
Laura Grandfield currently serves as manager of the Wolfgang Frese Survey Research Laboratory (SRL) which conducts telephone-based surveys, collecting data for research purposes. The SRL consists of 30 call stations and a staff of up to 75 interviewers. Grandfield has worked at the Social Science Research Center since 2011. During this time, she has helped oversee the data collection of more than 50 surveys and has managed more than 150 employees. Her position involves working as part of a team responsible for the day to day running of the SRL by coordinating interviewer schedules, payroll preparation, hiring of new employees, supervising and monitoring interviewer productivity.
Job Titles:
- Project Coordinator
- Division / Research Staff
- Research Staff / Project Coordinator III
Laure Bell serves as a Project Coordinator III at Mississippi State University's Social Science Research Center. She began working at the SSRC in 2012 as a researcher and later transitioned to the role of Project Coordinator for various projects that mostly center around research in the areas of early childhood, particularly at the intersection of health and education. Laure particularly contributes to projects by assisting with communication and promotional activities, grant submissions, project designs, writing, editing, compiling project reports, and qualitative research. She manages media outreach, social media, websites, and communications for multiple projects. Her current projects include: the Mississippi Data Project, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation; the Vroom Expansion project, funded by the Bezos Family Foundation; and the Mississippi Consumer Education Interactive Resource Maps project, funded by MDHS. Past projects have included: the Child Health and Development Project - Mississippi Thrive, which was a five year collaboration of the SSRC with the University of Mississippi Medical Center's Center for the Advancement of Youth and funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration; the Mississippi KIDS COUNT project, which was funded by the Children's Foundation of Mississippi; the EMPOWR Program (Empowering Mentors to Promote Women's Retention), funded by the Women's Foundation of Mississippi; the Children's Foundation of Mississippi planning grant project (served as principal investigator), funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation; Project Fit America Evaluation, funded through Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi Foundation; and others. Laure holds a B.A. in English from the University of West Georgia with a minor in art.
Bell's work is supported in part by MAFES.
Job Titles:
- Division / Research Staff
- Research Associate at Mississippi State University 's
- Research Staff / Research Associate I
Biography
Lauren E. Etheredge is a Research Associate at Mississippi State University's Social Science Research Center. She received a B.S. in Psychology and B.A. in Sociology from Mississippi State University in December of 2023. She is currently pursuing her master's degree in Sociology at MSU. Her primary research interests include social and policy determinants of mental health, gender and sexual minority health, ADHD and Autism coping and interventions, Social and Emotional Learning, bullying intervention, and impacts of AI and social media. Her undergraduate honors thesis examined barriers to mental healthcare among college students using an intersectional approach. She plans to pursue her PhD in sociology upon completion of her master's.
Job Titles:
- Division / Research Staff
- Project Director for Childcare Provider Professional Development at the Social Science Research Center of Mississippi State University
- Research Staff / Project Director
Lisa Long is a Project Director for Childcare Provider Professional Development at the Social Science Research Center of Mississippi State University. Ms. Long directs the Early Childhood ECHO Project at MSU and collaborates with the Early Childhood Leadership Institute in partnership with the Graduate Center for the Study of Early Learning of the University of Mississippi. Her work promotes the growth of leaders in early care and education and educational opportunities for early childhood professionals and families with young children. Ms. Long manages the administrative and programmatic operations of the Child Development Associate Scholarship Program and Project ECHO for Childcare Providers.
Previously, she led professional development training content creation and dissemination through the Mississippi Thrive Child Health and Development Project to improve the developmental health of children ages 0-5 in Mississippi. Her other work at the SSRC has included writing policy briefs, a survey of Mississippi's public school kindergarten teachers about school readiness among their students; and the co-design of a curriculum for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students to assist young children in developing healthy eating and activity habits, an NIH-funded Science Education Partnership Award Project.
Before joining MSU in 2012, Ms. Long worked both internationally and domestically with the nonprofit organization, Save the Children, as their Senior Education Specialist in Early Childhood Development. Ms. Long holds a Master of Arts in International Educational Development with an emphasis in Early Childhood Education.
Long's work is supported in part by MAFES.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor in the Department of English
Lourdes Cardozo Gaibisso is an assistant professor in the department of English with a focus in systemic functional linguistics and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Her scholarship focuses on science literacy for minoritized populations and culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies. She is launching a lab at the SSRC to focus on Science Literacy for All learners.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate
- Division / Research Staff
- Research Staff / Research Associate I
Biography
Madeline Burdine joined the SSRC in January 2024 as a research associate. Burdine received her bachelor's degree in communication from Mississippi State University. She earned a master's degree in integrated marketing communication (2022) as well as a master's degree in sociology (2024) from the University of Mississippi. As a graduate student at the University of Mississippi, Burdine put her passion for the social sciences to work in a number of ways. She served for one year as a graduate assistant for the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies before being selected to serve as a graduate research assistant on a research project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Over the course of the project, Burdine was part of interviewing over 100 White southerners to explore how they feel about their place within the racial hierarchy today. Burdine's thesis explored how heterosexuals who are considered supportive of the LGBTQ+ community navigate and maintain relationships with their LGBTQ+ friends and family within the conservative state of Mississippi. Burdine has also conducted interviews for the Queer Mississippi Oral History Project.
As a research associate at the Social Science Research Center, Burdine has worked on projects within the following labs: Mississippi Tobacco Data, the Gender Impacts Lab, and the Evaluation and Research Group. Her diverse skillset allows her work to range from data collection to graphic design expertise in the formulation of reports.
Burdine is currently completing courses toward a Ph.D. in Sociology from Mississippi State University.
Job Titles:
- Data Management Assistant
Job Titles:
- Associate Research Professor
Job Titles:
- Assistant Research Professor
Job Titles:
- Administration / Senior Administrative Assistant
- Division / Administration
Job Titles:
- Project Coordinator
- Division
Melinda Hardin currently serves as Project Coordinator II for the Mississippi Alcohol Safety Education Program. Her responsibilities include processing all enrollment data as well as receiving, processing and distributing participant material and participant information for the MASEP classes. She communicates with and provides assistance to the courts throughout the state to update MASEP participant status records. Additionally, she provides assistance to the Coordinator of MASEP and corresponds with the class instructions and participants.
Job Titles:
- Research Staff / Program Manager
Job Titles:
- Research Associate
- Division / Research Staff
- Research Staff / Research Associate III
Biography
Michelle Gaither serves as a Research Associate III for the ECHO for Early Childhood Professionals and ECHO for Families of Young Children projects. Additionally, she assists on the CDA Scholarship program and Project ECHO of Childcare Providers. From 2019-2022, Ms. Gaither was an elementary education advisor for distance students and the online coordinator in the College of Education at Mississippi State University. Prior to her career at MSU, Ms. Gaither served as an educator in public schools for more than 20 years. She earned a B.S. degree in elementary education from Murray State University and a Master of Education from Mississippi State University.
Job Titles:
- Division / Research Staff
- Research Staff / Research Associate II
Mr. Malcolm Huell joined the staff of the Mississippi Tobacco Data at the Social Science Research Center in November 2011. He works for Dr. Robert McMillen, Associate Professor of Psychology and Coordinator for the Mississippi Tobacco Control Data Laboratory. Mr. Huell graduated in December 2011 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology degree with a double concentration in pre-med and Botany. Mr. Huell is currently seeking tobacco treatment certification to gain a better understanding of the science behind tobacco use, addiction, nicotine withdrawal, new and emerging products, and effective treatments for tobacco use. Mr. Huell currently oversees Mississippi's online smoke-free ordinance database and works as an associate on the Mississippi Youth Tobacco Survey.
Job Titles:
- Research Staff / Project Director
Job Titles:
- Professor, Department of Geosciences
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Health and Performance Resources in Memphis TN
Richard Thomas is Vice President of Health and Performance Resources in Memphis TN and conducts healthcare market research. He has worked as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Mississippi and the University of Tennessee and as a research associate at the U-M Center for Population Studies. Thomas has collaborated with SSRC Professor Emeritus Ron Cossman on projects related to the healthcare workforce and was nominated to become a Fellow in 2020. We're pleased to recognize Thomas with his medal now that we are able to gather together again.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of the Tobacco Control Unit
Job Titles:
- Research Staff / Research Associate I
Job Titles:
- Associate Research Professor
Job Titles:
- Research Staff / Research Associate I
Job Titles:
- Assistant Research Professor
Sujan Anreddy is an assistant research professor at the SSRC. Anreddy's research focuses on visual analytics of complex data sets, and since 2018 he has collaborated on and led a variety of research projects, including analyzing data from social media platforms related to individuals' feelings about and response to COVID-19, mapping projects related to resources for children's developmental and behavioral health, and, most recently, visual analytics for public health and program analysis in partnership with the Mississippi State Department of Health.
Job Titles:
- Administration / Business Manager
Job Titles:
- Research Staff / Research Associate II
Job Titles:
- Research and Development Associate
Viswadeep Lebakula is a research and development associate in geoinformatics engineering in the geospatial science and human security division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he uses big data analysis and machine learning to forecast things like energy demand and public health. Lebakula formerly worked as a graduate research assistant at the SSRC, and he continues to collaborate with Dr. Art Cosby on projects related to rural mortality and rural population health.
Will Davis is assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at MSU. A health economist, Davis investigates the impact of government policies such as universal school meals on the well-being of individuals and communities. In addition to collaborating on the recent McGovern-Dole School Meals program, Davis is working with the Systems Change Lab and will be examining the economic impact of child care policies in Mississippi.
Job Titles:
- Director Emeritus
- Distinguished Professor at Mississippi State University
- William L. Giles Distinguished Professor
Dr. Arthur G. Cosby is a William L. Giles Distinguished Professor at Mississippi State University (MSU). He served as Director and is a Research Fellow at the SSRC and a Professor of Sociology. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Mississippi State University in 1969 and has held prior faculty positions at Louisiana State University and Texas A & M University. He has numerous publications and conference presentations in the area of "public sociology." His research applies social science knowledge to such real-world problems as health, poverty, career development, racial disparities, tobacco control, families/children and policy studies. From 1981 to 1987, Dr. Cosby was the Thomas L. Bailey Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work. In 2003, he was the founding Director of the Mississippi Health Policy Research Center, and in 2000, he served as the Executive Director of the Rural Health, Safety, and Security Institute. His research program has been supported by numerous agencies and foundations, including the American Cancer Society, The Bower Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Economic Research Service, the Ministero dell Istruzione, dell Universita'e della Ricera, Italy, the National Aeronautic and Space Administration, the National Institute of Education, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Rural Health Policy (HRSA), the Phil Hardin Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the U. S. Department of Agriculture, as well as numerous state agencies. Dr. Cosby's current research focuses on a number of approaches to investigating the social climate for the improvement of health and well being in America. These include such topics as the social and cultural dimensions of pain, healthy and unhealthy places in America and geographic and racial disparities. In 2005, he was first editor of About Children: An Authoritative Resource on the State of Childhood Today which was released by the American Academy of Pediatrics on its 75th anniversary.