Jane Powers
Research Associate,Sr
2007
FLDCWeb Bio Page
Current Activities
Current Professional Activities
I have been a Senior Research Associate at the FLDC since 1985. Currently, I am the Project Director and Co-PI of the Assets Coming Together (ACT) for Youth Center of Excellence which supports the implementation of positive youth development strategies throughout communities in New York State and youth serving programs funded by the New York State Department of Health that promote adolescent health and well being. I also provide training and evaluation support for implementing violence prevention programs. My research interests include positive youth development, prevention of at risk behaviors, child abuse and neglect, violence prevention, and youth homelessness.
Current Research Activities
1) Evaluating the implementation and impact of the ACT for Youth initiative which includes studying the formation of community partnerships, community mobilization strategies that promote youth development, and the extent to which communities implement organizational and community policy changes that reflect youth develoment principles and practices.
2) Developing of tools and processes for programs to use to assess the extent to which they have implemented and integrated youth develoment principles and practices.
3) Homeless Youth Study: A participatory project that engages formerly homeless youth to study the scope and nature of youth homelessness in Tompkins County (a collaborative project with the Learning Web and Tompkins County Youth Services Department).
4) Inegrating youth-adult partnerships into organization and community decision making: What does it take? A collaborative project with University of Wisconsin to study how the innovative practice of youth voice (via youth/adult partnerships) is established within organizations and communities (using the ACT for Youth partnerships to examine this question).
5) Engaging Youth as Evaluation Partners: a collaborative project with the University of Wisconsin, Cooperative Extension, which involves developing a youth led evaluation approach for collecting and using data to bring about organizational change and improvement that strengthen youth development practices within programs.
Current Extension Activities
Implementing and evaluating youth development strategies in community settings; Building capacity of practitioners for program evaluation; Facilitating program assessment and action planning through youth/adult partnerships; Disseminating youth development knowledge, best practice and resources to policy makers, educators, and service providers across NYS and nationally through training, workshops, conferences and the ACT for Youth website www.actforyouth.net.
Biography
Biographical Statement
I have been a Senior Research Associate at Cornell University's Family Life Development Center since 1985 where I have worked on a variety of research projects which have examined the impact of violence on the lives of children, youth and families. Since 2000, I have been involved in the application of research and knowledge specifically around promoting the health and well being of adolescents and preventing risk behaviors, including violence. I currently am co-PI and Project Director for the Assets Coming Together (ACT) for Youth Upstate Center of Excellence, which is a collaboration of Cornell, the University of Rochester Division of Adolescent Medicine and the New York State Center for School Safety. We work with communities across New York State helping them implement positive youth development strategies. My research interests include positive youth development, evaluation of community based programs, child abuse and neglect, and violence prevention strategies. I received my Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University in 1985.
Administrative Responsibilities
I currently direct the Assets Coming Together (ACT) for Youth Upstate Center of Excellence and oversee several additional spin off research projects.
Courses, Websites, Pubs
Related Websites
www.human.cornell.edu/fldc/
www.actforyouth.net
www.nysyouth.net
Publications