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Dr. Eric Madfis, VPTRC Director
Eric Madfis, Ph.D., is a Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Washington Tacoma, where his research focuses on the causes and prevention of school violence, hate crime, and mass murder. He also serves as Director of the Violence Prevention and Transformation Research Collaborative. As a recognized expert on school and mass shootings, he has spoken to audiences across the country and around the world about his research, including to the United States Congress and the Washington State Legislature. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Northeastern University in Boston, where he was a Research Associate at the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict. He often teaches courses on Criminological Theory, Sociology of Deviance and Social Control, Criminal Homicide, Juvenile Justice, and Diversity and Social Justice. He was the recipient of UW Tacoma's Distinguished Research Award in 2018 and the Distinguished Community Engagement Award in 2024.
His work has been published in Aggression and Violent Behavior, American Behavioral Scientist, Behavioral Sciences & the Law, Critical Criminology, Homicide Studies, The Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, The Journal of Hate Studies, The Journal of Psychology, Men and Masculinities, School Psychology Review, Social Justice, The Social Science Journal, Sociological Focus, Sociological Inquiry, Violence and Gender, Youth Violence & Juvenile Justice, and in numerous edited volumes. He served as co-editor (along with Dr. Adam Lankford) of the February 2018 special issue of American Behavioral Scientist on "Media Coverage of Mass Killers." His most recent monograph, How to Stop School Rampage Killing: Lessons from Averted Mass Shootings and Bombings, explores how threats of multiple-victim rampage shootings are assessed and prevented in American public schools. He also just published a new edited volume entitled All-American Massacre: The Tragic Role of American Culture and Society in Mass Shootings which examines why mass shootings occur so much more frequently in the United States than anywhere else.
VPTRC Team
Kelly Kledzik
Program Coordinator, VPTRC
Kelly started working in Information Technology at Weyerhaeuser while earning her bachelor's degree in business administration at PLU. She left to be at home with her children and spend countless hours volunteering in schools. She has been working at UW Tacoma for over 19 years. She is enjoying her third stint at the School of Social Work and Criminal Justice and is excited about working to support the Violence Prevention and Transformation Research Collaborative.
Katie Callahan
Research Assistant
Katie is a research assistant with the VPTRC. Her research interests include precipitating factors such as culture, capitalism, and masculinity on mass shooter motivations; law enforcement and community relationships; and the school-to-prison, and more specifically the special education-to-prison, pipeline. She is a passionate advocate for civic engagement, grassroots advocacy, and social justice; believing that systemic change starts locally. She has previously worked as a data statistician in the tech sector and as a legal assistant for the county prosecutor's felony domestic violence and human trafficking unit. At the University of Washington Tacoma, Katie is a member of the Alpha Phi Sigma Honor Society and president of the Criminal Justice League.
VPTRC Affiliates
Kristina Anderson Froling
Kristina Anderson Froling is an international advocate in the fields of bystander intervention, active shooter response and violence prevention within schools, workplaces and public spaces.
Kristina is founder of the Koshka Foundation for Safe Schools, a non-profit that provides training on the prevention of school and workplace violence, education on active shooter preparedness, and consultation on post-crisis recovery. Ms. Froling travels extensively within the United States and Canada to spread the importance of preparedness and joint training between citizens, educators, law enforcement, emergency managers, and first responders. Ms. Froling started the non-profit after becoming one of the most critically injured survivors of the 2007 Virginia Tech school tragedy, where she was shot 3 times.
Ms. Froling is also co-founder of LiveSafe, a mobile technology communication platform for sharing safety-related information that is used by over 100 college campuses, as well as corporations and hospitals.
Ms. Froling has delivered training to numerous law enforcement and government agencies, as well as schools and workplaces to include school resource officers, university administrators, fire and emergency managers, FEMA, the FBI and private corporations. She is a member of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals and graduated from Virginia Tech with a B.S. in International Studies.
Dr. Franci Crepeau-Hobson
Franci Crepeau-Hobson, Ph.D., NCSP is a professor and director of the school psychology program at the University of Colorado Denver. She is a licensed psychologist, licensed school psychologist, and Chair of the National Association of School Psychologists School Safety and Crisis Response Committee, as well as a member of the Colorado Society of School Psychologists Statewide Crisis Response Team. These teams provide comprehensive school-based prevention, intervention, and postvention safety and crisis resources and services to school districts following incidents of violence and natural disasters around the country. Dr. Crepeau-Hobson’s research focuses on school safety, including violence prevention and threat assessment, youth suicide prevention, and crisis intervention. Her work has been published in a range of journals including School Psychology Review, Journal of School Violence; and Psychology in the Schools. She teaches courses on crisis prevention and intervention and psychological assessment, and she is the training director of the Colorado School Psychology Internship Consortium.
Dr. Laura Feuerborn
Dr. Laura Feuerborn is a Professor and Director of the Ed.S. School Psychology Program at the University of Washington Tacoma. Dr. Feuerborn is a Faculty Fellow in Social Emotional Learning and a Nationally Certified School Psychologist. Dr. Feuerborn holds research and teaching expertise in the fields of social and emotional learning (SEL) and Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS). Dr. Feuerborn is a co-author of several SEL-focused programs, research articles, and books, including the Strong Kids & Teens programs (Brookes Publishing) and Social and Emotional Learning in the Classroom (Guilford Publishing). Dr. Feuerborn is a co-developer of the Staff Perceptions of Behavior and Discipline (SPBD) and the Student Perceptions of Behavior and Discipline (StPBD), validated survey tools that help schools mobilize staff and student voice to implement and sustain equitable practices in schoolwide behavior supports.
Dr. Janelle Hawes
Janelle Hawes is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and Criminal Justice at the University of Washington Tacoma. Her past research focused on youth experiences in the education, foster care, and juvenile legal systems. Currently she is conducting program assessments and other applied evaluations for police departments in the region, with specific attention paid to matters of diversity, inclusion, workplace climate, and community engagement of police officers.
Dr. Adam Lankford
Dr. Adam Lankford is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice at The University of Alabama. He is the author of two books and many peer-reviewed studies on mass shootings, terrorism, and other forms of criminal behavior. His findings have been published in many scientific journals and cited by The White House, by every major media outlet in the United States, and by international media from more than 40 countries. From 2003 to 2008, Dr. Lankford helped coordinate Senior Executive Anti-Terrorism Forums for high-ranking foreign military and security personnel as part of a contract with the U.S. State Department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance program. In 2019, Dr. Lankford received the “Innovation in Research and Publication Award” from the National Association for Behavioral Intervention and Threat Assessment.
Dr. Michelle Markert Porter
Michelle Markert Porter, Ed.D., survived the Columbine High School shooting on April 20, 1999, during her senior year of high school. She earned a Bachelor of Science in elementary education and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish at Oklahoma Baptist University. Michelle earned a Master of Arts in Spanish Language and Literature from Baylor University where she lectured in Spanish for two years before teaching high school Spanish. She completed her doctorate in education in curriculum and instruction through Texas A&M University where she researched biliteracy in the U.S. and school shooting prevention. Her Record of Study is titled A Qualitative Phenomenological Study of Columbine Shooting Survivors: Building Relationships of Trust and Care with Our Students. She hopes that her research will demonstrate the lasting trauma that surviving a school shooting has on students and teachers and help change policies in the U.S. Michelle is currently living in New Zealand with her husband and two children and teaching high school English as a Second Language.
Dr. Jason R. Silva
Dr. Jason R. Silva is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at William Paterson University. His research examines mass shootings, terrorism, school violence, and media coverage of crime. Silva recently developed the Global Mass Shooting Database to understand and compare perpetrator motivations and strategies for intervention and prevention. His recent publications have appeared in Aggression and Violent Behavior, American Journal of Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice Policy Review, Homicide Studies, International Criminal Justice Review, International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Security Journal, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Violence against Women, and Victims & Offenders. His work has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, New York Magazine, NPR, Oxygen, and The Conversation. Silva has also been a featured mass shooting and firearm violence expert for media outlets including CBS, Denver Post, NBC, Newsweek, and USA Today.
Dr. Michael L. Sulkowski
Dr. Michael L. Sulkowski is an associate professor and Program Coordinator in the School Psychology Program at the University of Alabama. He is the co-author of Leadership for Safe Schools: The Three-Pillar Approach to Supporting the Mental Health of Students, Creating Safe Schools and Fostering Students’ Mental Health, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in K-12 Schools: A Practitioner’s Workbook, First and Second Editions. Dr. Sulkowski also has authored or co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed publications, many of which pertain to violence prevention and school safety.
Dr. Stanislav Vysotsky
Stanislav Vysotsky is an Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of the Fraser Valley. He is a scholar of far right and antifascist movements and the conflicts between them. Dr. Vysotsky’s research on the far right focuses on the relationship between ideology and violence as transmitted through movement culture and online interaction. This research has been published in numerous journal articles and book chapters. His research on the militant antifascist movement and the relationship between threat, space, subculture, and social movement activism was published in the book American Antifa: The Tactics, Culture, and Practice of Militant Antifascism (Routledge) as well as in scholarly journals. He serves as the North American coordinator of the Worldwide Antifascism Research Network. His current research focuses on accelerationism on the far right as well as antifascist conceptions of self-defense.
