March 01, 2010

Administration of Justice faculty member honored

by Andrea Hahn

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Rod K. Brunson, associate professor in the Administration of Justice program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, is this year’s recipient of the Tory J. Caeti Memorial Award.

The award is part of the Juvenile Justice Section for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, a national professional organization emphasizing criminal justice research, and with a policy and practioner focus as well.

The award, sponsored by faculty in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of North Texas, honors a young scholar killed while conducting criminal justice training in Turkey. The award goes to young academics -- those who have completed their education less than seven years previous -- and who have made significant contributions to the field of juvenile justice.

Brunson earned his doctoral degree in 2003 from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He joined the faculty at SIUC in 2008.

Brunson’s research interests include several aspects of juvenile justice, including delinquency, gangs and female gang involvement, communities and crime, and qualitative research methods.

He is a past recipient of the New Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology. He was a keynote speaker at the Second Annual Minority Research Day at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2006. His articles appear in such journals as Justice Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review and Sociological Quarterly. “Racial profiling,” for which he served as editor, appeared in 2008 through Thomson Wadsworth Publishing.

The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences held its annual conference in San Diego, Calif., the last week of February.