CHSS Strategic Review Committee

Amanda Choo is the Applied Learning Specialist for the Department of Justice Studies. She joined Montclair State University in October 2019 and received her Masters in Human Resource Management from Rutgers University. She provides guidance and expertise to students on topics surrounding career readiness and experiential education. She assists students with securing impactful internships for credit through managing employer partnerships and developing curriculum to unpack their experience.

Bekki Davis has been a professional Academic Advisor for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences since 2018. She completed her master’s degree in Counseling and Higher Education through Montclair in 2011. Her interests include program development and addressing equity and diversity needs in higher education. As an advisor, Bekki seeks to help students find the significant connections between what they want to study and the world’s problems they want to help solve.

Emily Douglas is a Professor in the Department of Social Work & Child Advocacy. Douglas joined the Montclair State faculty in fall 2020 coming from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, where she was also a full professor and department head. Her research focuses on the program and policy implications of issues that address child and family well-being, largely in the areas of family violence: fatal child maltreatment, under-represented victims of partner violence and help-seeking, children’s exposure to partner violence, corporal punishment, family disruption, and the connection between research and policy. Dr. Douglas is the author of 60+ peer-reviewed publications, 4 books, and she presents annually at domestic and international conferences. Dr. Douglas has spoken at the State Houses in Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut and provided invited testimony before a Congressionally-created committee focused on children’s deaths. In 2016-2017 she was a Congressional fellow in Washington, D.C., dually sponsored by the Society for Research in Child Development and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology; during this time, she held a position in the U.S. Senate where she was the lead author on an investigation concerning for-profit foster care.

Sangeeta Parashar, associate professor in the Department of Sociology, received a PhD in sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include: Social Demography; Development/Globalization; and Sociology of Health and Work. She teaches courses including Statistics for Social Research, Sociology of Aging, Sociology of Rich and Poor Nations, Social Inequality, and Sociology of Population.

Gabriel Rubin, associate professor in the Department of Justice Studies, has a PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests include: Terrorism, Political Theory, Civil War, Middle East and African Politics. He teaches courses including Intro to International Justice, Perspectives in Justice Studies I, International Justice II, Statistics for Social Research, Research in Justice Studies, Theories of Justice, Terrorism and Social, Rights, Liberties and American Justice, and International Civil Conflicts. He is the author of Freedom and Order: How Democratic Governments Restrict Civil Liberties after Terrorist Attacks–and Why Sometimes They Don’t by Lexington Books (2011). Rubin is the faculty coordinator for the International Justice program.

Stephen Ruszczyk, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, received a PhD from the City University of New York. His research interests include immigration, citizenship, schools, Latinos, community-based organizations and qualitative methods. He currently teaches courses including Urban Sociology and Latino Sociology.

Valerie Sessa, Professor of Psychology, received a PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from New York University. Her research interests include leadership development in college students and continuous learning at the individual, group, and organizational levels. She teaches courses including Leadership Theory and Development, Groups in Organizations and Work Attitudes and Motivation. She is the author of three books: Executive selection: Strategies for success, Jossey Bass (with Jodi Taylor, 2000), Continuous learning in Organizations: Individual, group, and organizational perspectives, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. (with Manny London, 2005), Work group learning: Understanding, improving, and assessing how groups learn in organizations, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. (edited with Manny London, 2008), and has one book in progress: College Student Leadership Development: Learning from Experience, Taylor and Francis.