Gary B. Melton
Phone: 864.656.6271
Email: gmelton@clemson.edu
Among other public and professional service, Prof. Melton has served as a member of the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, the U.S. Attorney General’s Expert Panel on Youth Violence, the APA Working Group on Child Abuse and Neglect, the APA Committee on International Relations in Psychology, the American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law, the ABA and APA working groups on the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Institute of Medicine committee on training of health professionals about family violence, the National Research Council panel on elder mistreatment, and the national and state boards of Parents Anonymous.
Prof. Melton has testified several times before the U.S. Congress, and he has served as a consultant to numerous state social service, mental health, legislative, and court-administrative agencies. As director of the Consortium on Children, Families, and the Law, a national network of policy research centers, he co-organized a long-standing Congressional briefing series. Prof. Melton's work has been cited by U.S. courts at all levels, and he was the principal architect of the new national child protection strategy proposed by the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect.
The author of approximately 300 publications, Prof. Melton has published or is currently writing or editing books on diverse topics of child and family policy and psychology, including child research; children’s law; pediatric AIDS; forensic mental health services; child advocacy; rural psychology; research ethics; children’s competence; the law’s effects on behavior; motivation in family relationships; use of social science research in legal reform; child mental health policy; child protection policy; and international developments in child and family policy. Currently co-editor of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, he has served on the editorial board of more than 25 journals and book series.
Prof. Melton has received APA’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Psychology (2005), the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest (1985), the Karl Heiser Award (1998), and the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public Service (1999). He has also received distinguished contributions awards from two APA divisions. He also has received awards for distinguished research and public service from Prevent Child Abuse America, Psi Chi (the national honorary society in psychology), the American Psychological Foundation, the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia, and the American Professional Society on Abuse of Children and its South Carolina chapter. For his contributions to Nebraska’s child and family policy, Prof. Melton was honored by the governor with the honorific title of Admiral of the Nebraska Navy.
Prof. Melton has lectured, consulted, or conducted research in approximately 40 countries and territories abroad, and much of his work in recent years has focused on the application of international human rights law to child and family policy. He was a Fulbright professor at the Norwegian Center for Child Research.
Prof. Melton also is active in research on services for children and families in diverse contexts. He has been principal investigator on projects funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and various state agencies and private organizations. He was principal investigator on a long-term multi-million-dollar grant from The Duke Endowment to design, implement, and evaluate a comprehensive community-wide effort to prevent child abuse and neglect in southern Greenville County.
Prof. Melton has held faculty appointments at the Universities of Hawaii, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Carolina, and Virginia and at Morehead (Kentucky) State University. He is currently an Extraordinary Professor in the Centre for Psychology and Law at the University of the Free State in South Africa.