Dr. Jennifer Frank
Assistant Professor of School Psychology and Special Education | Research Assistant Professor at Pennsylvania State University’s Prevention Research Center
Dr. Frank is an Assistant Professor of School Psychology and Special Education and Research Assistant Professor at the Prevention Research Center at the Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Frank will serve as PI, and will be responsible for overseeing IRB, data management, data analysis, co-authoring of reports, co-development of program content, reporting, and overall project and fiscal management. Dr. Frank has prior experience serving as a principal investigator on similar projects from federal and state agencies, is lead methodologist on several federally funded IES and NIH grants. Dr. Frank has worked at the Prevention Research Center since 2011. Her research interests focus on school-based prevention and the ecology of risk (family-school-peer-community) across middle to late childhood. Dr. Frank has extensive experience developing, implementing, and evaluating teacher professional development programs. Dr. Frank brings experience in Positive Behavior Support, coordinating the development of products involving a technological component. Dr. Frank completed her post-doctoral training at the University of Oregon, with a focus on advanced statistical methods to evaluate universal prevention practices. Dr. Frank currently serves on the editorial boards of several professional journals.
Dr. Deborah Schussler
Associate Professor in the College of Education | Affiliate at Pennsylvania State University’s Prevention Research Center
Dr. Schussler is Associate Professor in the College of Education at Penn State University with an affiliation at the Prevention Research Center. Dr. Schussler will serve as Co-PI and lead program development, school-based implementation efforts, and qualitative data collection and analysis. Dr. Schussler brings expertise in curriculum development and teacher education, and has designed and conducted qualitative and mixed methods studies exploring teacher candidate dispositions and teacher reflection. She has worked with pre-service and experienced teachers for 16 years at Vanderbilt University, Villanova University, and Penn State. Her work has been recognized by the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education where she serves as the chair of the TEAM-C (Teacher Education as a Moral Community) taskforce.
Dr. Peter Nelson
Dr. Nelson is an Assistant Professor of School Psychology at Penn State University. He completed his doctoral training in school psychology at the University of Minnesota after obtaining his M.A. in education from the University of Mississippi. A former high school teacher, his primary research interests focus on data-based decision-making, prevention, and intervention in the classroom setting. He has published and presented on issues related to effective math intervention, classroom environment assessment, teacher development, screening, and progress monitoring.