Current Assignment in the College of Education and Human Sciences:
I currently teach CYAF 280 (Family Science), CYAF 497D/897D (Community Internship in Child, Youth and Family Studies), and CYAF 872 (Youth Development).
Personal Information: I am a (fifth generation) native of Durango, Colorado- a town of about 25,000 located in the southwest corner of the state. Durango is in the valley and surrounded by enormous mountains on all sides. I grew up down-hill skiing in the winter and water skiing in the summer- my family still lives there and I visit as often as possible. I received my bachelor’s degree, majoring in psychology and cultural anthropology, from the University of Colorado-Boulder in 1991. I went to graduate school immediately thereafter- and earned my master’s (1993) and doctoral degrees (1996) in Family Studies from the University of Arizona. (I loved living in the desert!) After graduating from UA, I accepted my current position at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I teach a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses--both in the traditional classroom setting and via distance. My research is largely focused on marginalized female populations. While in Arizona, my masters and doctoral work centered on teenage parenting among reservation-residing Navajo Native Americans. I returned to the Reservation in 2008 and collected follow-up data from the (now adult) women and their adolescent-aged children. In addition, I have a long research program focused on women trafficked into the commercial sex industry. This work began in 1997 examining the developmental trajectories of street-level prostituted women. My first book "Exposing the Pretty Woman Myth: A Qualitative Investigation of Street-Level Prostituted Women" was published July, 2006. In summer, 2012 I traveled to Mumbai, India and collected interview data from women trafficked into the commercial sex trade and living in red-light slum districts. I am the primary editor of a two-volume book examining global prostitution and sex trafficking (Vol I focuses on Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Middle East and Vol II is devoted to Latin America, North America and Europe).
I live in Omaha and have an amazing two-year-old son!
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