Established Diversity Researcher
Francesca Adler-Baeder
Associate Professor and Extension Specialist - Human Development and Family Studies
of Human Sciences

Francesca Adler-Baeder works with diverse and at-risk populations who are typically under-served and under-represented in social science research. Her current empirical work using mixed methods of qualitative and quantitative assessment examines community-based relationship education programs targeting low-resource populations of youth, couples, and nonmarried parents with emphasis on effective program processes and impacts. In addition, with the recognition that basic studies of couple and family relationships in Latino and African American stepfamilies are nearly nonexistent, she is focused on empirically documenting unique patterns of blended family development and dynamics based on ethnicity. Her work has been supported by both state and federal grants. A recent five-year multi-activity grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in support of the enhancement of access to and the assessment of educational resources on healthy relationships/marriages and responsible fatherhood, is the largest single social and behavioral sciences research grant ever awarded an Auburn University faculty member. The work has informed program refinement and policies in the area of family strengthening. Current models of implementation and assessment are shared with other states. She has given more than 50 invited presentations in the past few years, including recent presentations at The White House Roundtable and at the National Press Club on innovative university-community partnerships.

Early Career, Innovative Diversity Researcher
Mitchell Brown
Assistant Professor - Political Science
College of Liberal Arts

Mitchell Brown's research takes into account the common theme of how government helps or hinders marginalized groups of individuals. She is conducting a cross-national, quantitative analysis of the factors that lead to differing reproductive rights policies.

She and a collaborator consider both structural and agency factors and have begun to examine changes in abortion policies over time. For the past three years, she has been co-principal investigator evaluating one of the Bush administration's faith-based programs in which the Office of Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice provided funding to faith-based and community organizations to provide domestic violence services to victims in rural areas. She has published on identity politics and the mayorality of Marion Barry in Washington, D.C., and is now applying her methodology to identity deployment strategies used during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Other in-progress work weaves together these issues and methodologies and includes studies of the homeless and other vulnerable groups. Brown is director of research at the Institute for Community Peace, a national advocacy organization devoted to building safe, functioning communities in violent areas.

Established Diversity Researcher
Constance Hendricks
Professor and Registered Nurse - Community Health
School of Nursing

Constance Hendricks is an expert in adolescent health and community-based nursing interventions designed for vulnerable populations in the United States and abroad.

Her work takes on the most difficult topics, such as adolescent suicide. She has also made high-level contributions to osteoporosis, HIV, breast cancer, and chronic illness research. The United Nations recognized her for her services for Zeta Helping Other People Excel, or Z-HOPE, for which she wrote a two-volume training manual that has been used by more than two million people in the U. S. and guided the building of fifty-three water wells in Ghana, West Africa. Her funding sources, as varied as the NIH and the Rural Alabama Black Church Project, suggest the quality of her work and her tireless efforts to help the underserved and vulnerable. She has received more than $4,100,000 for diversity projects and research and has more than fifty publications in the field. From these studies she has developed the Adolescent Health Promotion Lifestyle Profile, Adolescent Hope Scale, the Refusal and Resistant Skills Questionnaire, and The Hendricks Perceptual Determinants Model, all used extensively by nursing and social science researchers. As graduate chair of nursing at Southern University-Baton Rouge, she implemented the nation's second PhD in nursing program at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, has been selected for induction into the American Academy of Nursing, and is the first African American to be elected vice president of the Alabama State Nurses Association.