Center for Justice and Social Research

Bryan Lee Miller, Director

Dr. Miller has evaluated drug abuse, probation practices, offender reentry, and drug treatment programs. He has worked on projects funded by the U.S. Department of Justice to reduce the number of individuals with mental illnesses and co-occurring disorders in jail, evaluate veteran treatment courts, design law enforcement-led initiatives to respond to individuals with mental illnesses, and support justice-led programs to implement evidence-based practices to reduce substance abuse. He has authored numerous successful federal service delivery grants from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance for substance abuse treatment, specialty court enhancement, and justice and mental health collaboration programs. He has formed research practitioner partnerships with governmental agencies including county governments, law enforcement, jails and courts. Agencies served include the Clemson University Police Department, Oconee County, Oconee County Sheriff’s Office, Screven County Sheriff’s Office and the 29th Judicial Circuit of Missouri.

Catherine Mobley, Associate Director

Dr. Mobley has engaged in extensive community-based research and evaluation for diverse clients, including the United Way of Pickens County, the Upstate Housing Coalition, the United Way of Greenville County, Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, and the Saluda Reedy Watershed Coalition. Dr. Mobley is currently involved in three active NSF projects. She is also Co-PI with Leslie Hossfeld on a community-based grant from Blue Cross/Blue Shield of South Carolina Foundation investigating food security in seven rural South Carolina counties. Through her interdisciplinary research on engineering/STEM education, Dr. Mobley has investigated the experiences of first-generation students, transfer students, Black students, student veterans, and women in engineering. She will be applying this knowledge to initiate a new project on social science students. This experience can be leveraged to assist community-based agencies engaged in STEM education in diverse disciplines. Dr. Mobley has also taught a graduate-level evaluation course for 11 years through which she and her students have designed process and outcome evaluations for diverse community-based clients, including Pickens County Meals on Wheels, Littlejohn Community Center, Safe Harbor, Clemson Community Care, the Parenting Place, and United Way of Pickens County.

Nasaskyia Hicks, Research Project Manager

Dr. Hicks is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Justice and Social Research. She holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership, a Master of Criminal Justice, and a Master of Science in Youth Development Leadership from Clemson University. Her previous research has focused on evaluating predictors of delinquency, the effectiveness of school-based prevention programs, and the disparate impact of exclusionary discipline practices in public K-12 schools. She has authored grants and developed prevention programs to combat disruptive behavior in elementary and middle schools. Dr. Hicks will lead interdisciplinary social research projects and is currently working on a community policing and public safety project. Dr. Hicks is also an Adjunct Faculty at Anderson University.

Natallia Sianko, Associate Professor

Dr. Sianko is a broadly trained social scientist whose focus on research, teaching, and service activities transcend disciplinary boundaries and relates to various stakeholders, including the general scientific community, students, non-profit organizations, and governments. She contributes to the promotion of social justice and human rights, with a special focus on children and youth. Dr. Sianko’s research portfolio includes individual and collaborative initiatives on civic engagement and democratic competence among adolescents in established and aspiring democracies, help-seeking in adolescent dating violence, and monitoring and assessing the right to benefit from scientific progress. As an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice, she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on research methodology, advises graduate students in the research design and analysis, and oversees data collection, entry, and management of a multi-year, multi-site, federally funded research project.