Kris Bosworth, Ph.D. is the Smith Endowed Chair in Substance Abuse Education and. Professor in the College of Education at the University of Arizona. She served as the Head of the Educational Leadership Department for six years. She holds a Masters in Counseling and Guidance (1975) and a Ph.D. (1988) in Adult Education (Program Evaluation and Educational Technology) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Prior to her appointment at the University of Arizona in 1998, she was an Associate Professor and the Director of the Center for Adolescent Studies at Indiana University and a Visiting Scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with the Youth Violence Prevention Team.
Trained as a middle school social studies teacher, Dr. Bosworth has been involved in the prevention field since 1979. While at the University of Wisconsin, she was a pioneer in the development of computer games and simulations to teach adolescents skills to prevent drug use, violence and pregnancy. These multimedia interventions have received several awards and one system (SMART Team) was designated a model program by SAMHSA in 1999 and a promising program by the US Department of Education in 2000. She has consulted with numerous projects and organizations in the development of prevention curriculum and multimedia. These include curricula such as Quest Skills for Adolescents and Skills for Growing, Second Step Middle School Drug Prevention Curriculum, Schlessinger Media Drug Prevention video/CD series and the Take Charge of Your Life curriculum.
As the Smith Endowed Chair in Prevention and Education at the University of Arizona, Dr. Bosworth has focused her work on the role of school culture and climate as a buffer for individual risk factors for risk taking behavior. She has combined her background in education with her training in prevention science to create processes that enable counselors and other educators to implement and sustain evidence based strategies in all levels of prevention implementation. Her model, Protective Schools, focuses on creating school climates and cultures that act a buffer to risk taking behaviors. This model which includes an assessment has been widely implemented in schools nationwide. She has over 50 publications in the field of prevention and two of her multimedia products are marketed and used by schools through out the world.
In the Educational Leadership program, she works with aspiring and practicing leaders to help implement change and to increase the protective nature of school cultures and climates.
Visit her web site at www.protectiveschools.org
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