Four new faculty members will join the College of Criminal Justice this fall.

The new assistant professors will include Drs. David Pyrooz, Danielle L. Boisvert, and Visiting Professor Ryan Randa, who will teach in the criminal justice program, and Dr. Sheree Hughes-Stamm, who will teach in forensic science.

Dr. Boisvert specializes in life-course/developmental criminology, biosocial criminology and behavioral genetics. Her research focuses mainly on the examination of genetic and environmental influences on a variety of delinquent and criminal behaviors throughout the life course. She received a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati, a M.S. in Forensic Science from The George Washington University and a B.S. in Biology from the University of Western Ontario.

Before joining SHSU, Dr. Boisvert was an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice in the School of Public Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg. Her work has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of Affective Disorders, Journal of Criminal Justice Education, Stress and Health, Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Criminal Justice and Behavior, and Behavioral and Brain Functions. She will teach Research Methods in the fall.

Dr. Pyrooz’s research interests include developmental and life course criminology, gangs and deviant networks, violent offending and victimization, and criminal justice system responses. His current research projects include examining the consequences of adolescent gang membership on education and employment in early adulthood, exploring the influence of social media on criminal behavior, and identifying patterns of gang membership across the life course. He will teach Research Methods and Special Topic: Gangs.

Dr. Pyrooz received his Ph.D. degree in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Arizona State University and a B.S. and M.S. in Criminology from California State University, Fresno. He has co-authored articles that appear in Crime and Delinquency, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Journal of Criminal Justice, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Justice Quarterly, Homicide Studies, and Social Science Research.

Dr. Randa has been involved in a wide range of research projects traversing the spectrum of criminal justice and criminological research, including juvenile and adult probation, inmate risk and needs assessment, student fear of victimization, and crime prevention through environmental design and change. Dr. Randa’s current research interests include fear of crime, adaptive behaviors, and opportunity based theories of crime.

Dr. Randa is a visiting professor from Penn State Harrisburg. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati and a B.S. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Superior. His work has appeared in the Journal of Criminal Justice and the Journal of Crime and Justice. He will teach Introduction to Methods of Research and Introduction to Criminal Justice in the fall.

Dr. Hughes-Stamm is a Senior Teaching Fellow at Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia. She specializes in forensic genetics, forensic anthropology and human anatomy. She received the Allan Hodda Memorial Award from the Australian and New Zealand Forensic Science Society as well as the Junior Scientist Award from the Australian Society of Reproductive Biology Serono.

Dr. Hughes-Stamm also served as a lecturer in Human Anatomy at Griffith University on the Gold Coast. Her current area of study has been on forensic genetics, and she specializes in the DNA analysis of highly degraded samples such as those which may be found in missing persons and mass disaster cases. Her research focuses on DNA extraction from bone and teeth, whole genome amplification, STR and SNP typing. Her work has been presented at several international forensic conferences and been published in the International Journal of Legal Medicine, the Journal of Morphology, the Journal of Parasitology, and Biochemicio et Biophysicia Acta. Dr. Hughes Stamm will assist with various lab classes in the fall, and she will begin teaching in January.