Faculty

Dr. John Kraybill-Greggo began teaching at ESU in 2004. His teaching areas include Foundations of Social Work Practice; Social Work Practice and Skills I & II; Social Work Field Seminar; Social Work with Groups; and Social Welfare Policy, all of which are required courses for social work majors.

During his career, he has worked in a variety of behavioral health, medical social work, and university settings. His past agency-based social work roles have included practitioner, supervisor and agency administrator. His current primary research interests are related to the nonprofit sector, community needs assessment, and poverty. He has frequently collaborated with department and university colleagues on research projects in these areas.

Dr. Laurene Clossey began teaching at ESU in 2007. She has taught: Introduction to Social Work, Marriage and Family, Human Behavior and the Social Environment, Helping Philosophies, Child Welfare, Contemporary Social Work Practice, Introduction to Social Welfare Policy, and Social Work with Communities and Organizations.

She has worked in the field of mental health since first receiving her bachelor’s degree. Her research interests focus on the Mental Health Recovery Model, effective Recovery Model implementation and programming, and also studying evidence based mental health practices. She enjoys sharing her interest in this field with students and trying to engage students in understanding the coercive care endured by mental health consumers. Through research and teaching in this area, she hopes to contribute to decreasing stigma against the mentally ill.

She also practices in addition to her full time teaching and research at ESU. She is active in her field and brings current knowledge to the classroom. Her private practice integrates spirituality into clinical social work practice.

Teaching Interests:

Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality, Religion, Theory

Research Interests:

Social Inequality, Jewish American life and culture, Lesbian mothers, Social Movements, the intersection of collective and individual identity. Her Ph.D. dissertation title is Constructing Jewish Identity in a Southern Community, and Master thesis title is Penetrating Discourse: Gender and the Rhetoric of Legitimation in The Ladder Magazine for Lesbians.
Personal Interests: Travel anywhere and everywhere she can! Also seriously into listening to alternative music, reading novels, and trying to figure out how to play the drums.

Dr. Darla Drummond began teaching at ESU in 2015. Her teaching interests include Introduction to Criminal Justice, Criminology, Juvenile Delinquency, and Senior Seminar. Her research interests include deviance/crime on college campuses, parenting and delinquency, fear of victimization, and theory testing. She has published and presented work on theory testing, crime on college campuses, issues within the criminal justice system, and rehabilitation techniques, among other topics.

Her doctoral dissertation was a test of General Strain Theory with first semester freshmen students at two universities, a residential campus and a commuter campus. This research examined the levels of strain that students experienced and how they chose to cope with those strains (i.e. pro-socially or through substance abuse/academic dishonesty).

Dr. Michelle D. DiLauro began teaching at ESU in 2015. Her teaching areas include Human Behavior and the Social Environment, Social Work with Individuals and Families, Social Work Practice and Skills I & II, Medical Social Work Interventions, and Social Work Field Seminar.   

She has over 25 years in the field and has taught social work, human service, and psychology courses at the associate through master’s degree levels.  

Before her academic career she worked as a medical social worker serving both inpatient and ambulatory clinic adult and pediatric patients. She participated in the delivery of mind-body programs to the clinic population and community to enhance health and well-being. She currently serves at the Director of Field Education for the Social Work program and is an approved NASW clinical supervisor for the professional social work community.  

Her primary research interests are related to integrative healthcare practices, stress management, and spirituality. 

Dr. Chin Hu began teaching at ESU in 2006. Her teaching interests include Globalization, Comparison of Societies, Race and Cultural Minorities and Chinese Culture and Society. She is trained as a quantitative researcher and has taught the core requirement courses in Quantitative Analysis and Research Methods for all three major programs in the department.

Her research interests focus on immigrant society and global education. Collaborating with colleagues in the department, she has published and presented work on Muslim immigrants living in the tri-state area, global education curriculum in higher education and community needs assessment research. Her doctoral dissertation examined third-wave democratization process in new democracies, with as focus on Taiwan.

Dr. Carrie Maloney has worked for several criminal and juvenile justice agencies, primary among them the New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission. Her primary area of research and expertise is risk-assessment and classification injuvenile justice. Much of her work focuses on accountability of justice system practitioners, as well as the identification of best practices in the implementation of evidence-based practice in juvenile justice settings. She maintains an ongoing collaborative relationship with the PA Juvenile Court Judges Commission, the PA Juvenile Justice Research and Training Center, as well as the PA Juvenile Probation Chief's Association in their efforts to implement evidence-based juvenile justice system reform across the state.

She has taught a variety of courses here at ESU, including Introduction to Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice Ethics, Criminology, Research Methods, and the senior seminar course - covering topics such as the Sociology of Gangs and Capital Punishment.

Dr. S. Hooshang Pazaki began teaching at East Stroudsburg University in Fall of 2005. His main areas of teaching are Introduction to Cultural Diversity, Research Methods, Sociological Theory, Culture and Society in the Middle East, Race & Ethnicity and Social Problems. His research interests have focused on social change, political sociology, Muslim immigrants, cultural diversity in the United States and sociological pedagogies. His doctoral dissertation title is Debt Dependency and Its Impact on the State and Social Welfare in Developing Societies: A Cross-National Study. Dr. Pazaki regularly presents and publishes scholarly papers in these areas. During his tenure he has been actively involved in various university-wide initiatives.

Teaching Interests:

Social Problems, Social Psychology, Sociological Theory, Social Inequality, Political Sociology, and Cultural Diversity.

Research Interests:

Causes and consequences of race, class, and gender inequalities; and assess student learning of controversial issues (e.g., structural inequalities and institutional discrimination) as well as identify solutions (e.g., progressive attitude change and social justice).

Teaching Interests:

Community Policing/Partnerships and Problem Solving, Police Leadership, Recruitment, and Training, Intelligence/data driven law enforcement operations, Post 911 policing , Police function, role, and culture in a democratic society.

Research Interests:

Police arrest decision-making/ Law enforcement in K-12 public schools/ Domestic violence responses by police/ Law enforcement in rural and tribal regions. Professor Richard Ruck is currently an ABD (Doctor of Education) at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania, Administration and Leadership Studies.

Professor Vertel Martin retired from the New York City Police Department at the rank of Lieutenant-Commander Detective Squad in February 2002 after completing 22 years of law enforcement service, and last served as the Investigative Coordinator of the “9-11-01 NYPD Missing Persons Task Force.” She is a graduate of the FBI National Academy. She also completed 45 post graduate credits at Columbia University’s Teachers College. In 2002, she began teaching part time at ESU, and has been the Co-Coordinator of Criminal Justice Program at Northampton Community College since 2006.

Her interests focus on teaching the next generation of security & criminal justice practitioners critical thinking & related applied skills in crime analysis, investigations, and police-community relations. She has published articles in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, and in the National Law Enforcement Encyclopedia.

Dr. Michael Pittaro began teaching at ESU in 2012. His research interests include Human Trafficking, Sexual Predators, Transformational Leadership, and Correctional Officer Stress. Before pursuing a career in higher education, he worked in Corrections Administration; has served as the Executive Director of an outpatient drug and alcohol facility, and as the Executive Director of a drug and alcohol prevention agency.

He has contributed to nearly 60 book and scholarly journal publications and serves on three International Editorial Advisory Boards, including the International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences, the International Journal of Cyber Criminology, and Elsevier Publishing. He has also served for the past four years as a program committee member for the South Asian Society of Criminology and Victimology and as a federal peer reviewer for both the United States Department of Justice and the National Institute of Justice. His doctoral dissertation examined the association between cyberbullying and criminal victimization, including suicide among adolescents in the United States.

Teaching Interests:

Dr. Jeff Rosky began teaching at ESU in 2017. His teaching areas include policing, quantitative methods and correctional treatment. His main research interests include the intersection of criminal justice and public health, correctional treatment and reentry, and improving social science research methods.

Research Interests:

Prior to Dr. Rosky’s academic career, he worked as a researcher in the Montana, Colorado and Florida state correctional systems and as a biostatistician in environmental science, public health, and cardiac care. His work has appeared in Criminology & Public Policy, Deviant Behavior, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, and Sexual Abuse. His doctoral dissertation examined the interaction between cumulative risk, protection, and self-control to predict resilience from deviant outcomes in a longitudinal sample of youth.

Teaching Interests

Dr. Mathers began teaching at ESU in the Fall of 2020. Before his academic career he served in a variety of social service positions including grant writing, ABA therapist assistant, at-risk youth mentor, and adaptive sports assistant.

Research Interest

Dr. Mathers research interests include college hazing, restorative justice, and prisons. He has publications using both quantitative and qualitative research designs. His doctoral dissertation examined reintegrative shaming theory among inmates in the American southeast. His publications appear in Justice Quarterly, Journal of Penal Law and
Criminology, Social Sciences, and International Journal of Court Administration.

Service

Dr. Mathers has service experience advising students, evaluating transfer equivalencies, reviewing research applications for IRB, and a variety of university-level policy councils.

Teaching Interests:

Human Behavior & the Social Environment, Helping Philosophies & Methods for Social Workers, Child Welfare Services, Introduction to Social Welfare Policy, Crisis Intervention

Research Interests:

Social & Economic Justice, Critical Discourse Analysis, Structural Racism & Oppression, Spirituality & Human Development. His doctoral dissertation, Exploring the Role of United States Legal Discourse in Creating, Sustaining, and Disrupting Vestiges of Slavery," was an exploratory study that proposed the use of the racialized names "negro," "colored," "black," and "white" represented vestiges of slavery that were socially and legally constructed, maintained, and perpetuated to validate a superior position for descendants of Europe in the United States, while assigning an inferior status to descendants of Africa in the United States.

Personal Interests:

Cooking, Music, & Reading