Research Team

Chris Melde is a Professor in the School of Criminal Justice and Faculty Athletics Representative (FAR) in the Office of the President at Michigan State University. His primary research interests include street gangs, gun violence prevention, and individual and community reactions to crime and victimization risk. He is a research associate at the Michigan Justice Statistics Center, the State’s official statistical analysis center. He is on the statewide advisory board for Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services’ Community Violence Intervention Division and was appointed by Governor Gretchen Witmer to serve on Michigan’s Automobile Theft Prevention Authority Board of Directors. He also serves on the Steering Committee for the Henry Ford Health Trauma Recovery Center in the city of Detroit. He serves as a subject matter expert for the National Center for School Safety, focusing on the role of law enforcement in school-based delinquency prevention and comprehensive approaches to school safety. He is currently the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on several funded projects, including a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) funded long-term follow-up of respondents from the second national evaluation of the Gang Resistance Education and Training Program (G.R.E.A.T.) that began in 2006 when participants were in the sixth or seventh grade. He also serves as a research partner for Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) gang and gun violence prevention programs in Detroit, Jackson, and all cities in the Western District of Michigan. Dr. Melde is a Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology and was awarded the 2015 Tory J. Caeti Memorial Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Juvenile Justice and Delinquency section for his work on gangs and youth violence prevention.

Kait Campbell is a doctoral student in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University (MSU). Her research interests include targeted violence, mass shootings, masculinities, social networks, and police responses to homelessness. Prior to studying at MSU, she obtained her B.A. in Criminology and Sociology and M.A. in Sociology from the University of Arkansas. At the University of Arkansas, she served as a graduate research assistant for a National Institute of Justice (NIJ)-funded study led by Dr. Natalie Kroovand-Hipple (Indiana University-Bloomington) and Dr. Kayla Allison (University of Arkansas) focused on police responses to homelessness.

Dena C. Carson is currently an Associate Professor of criminal justice in the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University in Indianapolis. Her appointment followed her Ph.D. and post-doctoral work at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. During that time Dena worked as a site coordinator for the National Evaluation of the Gang Resistance, Education, and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) Program. This included organizing survey administration with students in Nashville, Tennessee, Garland, Texas, and Chicago, Illinois between the years 2007 and 2011. Dena also served as project coordinator for the first follow-up to the G.R.E.A.T. evaluation in 2012. Currently, Dena is co-principal investigator on the National Institute of Justice funded 2023 follow-up to the G.R.E.A.T. evaluation.

Steven M. Chermak is a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. Dr. Chermak is interested in studying terrorism, school shootings, mass shootings, criminal justice organizations, and media coverage of crime and criminal justice. Much of his work in the last ten years has focused on terrorist and extremist activity. He and several colleagues are responsible for building the Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), one of the leading databases on domestic terrorism activities in the US. The ECDB has allowed him to publish articles understanding patterns of violence of far right, far left, and al-Qaeda inspired extremists, documenting how lone wolf attacks are different than group-inspired terrorist attacks, and examining the characteristics of foiled terrorist plots. More recently, he and colleagues have received funding to build another database on fatal and non-fatal school shootings. This database is in the final stages of completion, and it will provide an opportunity to better understand the characteristics of perpetrators that commit school violence and discuss differences in schools victimized by fatal and non-fatal attacks.

Dr. Chermak’s research has been funded by the Department of Homeland Security, National Institute of Justice, and the Michigan State Police. He has published two books, seven edited books, and numerous research reports. His research has appeared in a number of journals including Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Criminology and Public Policy, Justice Quarterly, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, Journal of Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice Policy Review, and the Journal of Crime, Conflict, and the Media.

Rose Rivera is a Doctoral Student in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University.

Alex is a Master's student in the School of Criminal Justice. He received his B.A. in Criminal Justice from Saginaw Valley State University, graduating with Summa Cum Laude honors. Alex also received a double minor at SVSU in Psychology and Communications and competed for the school's Track and Field team at the NCAA DII level.