Staff

Ronald Glick, Project Director, is Professor of Sociology at Northeastern Illinois University. Dr. Glick holds a Doctorate in Criminology from the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches the Sociology of Drug Abuse, Urban Sociology, Social Stratification and Sociological Theory. For more than 20 years has served as Academic Advisor to drug abuse treatment and prevention workers in the Chicago metropolitan area through Northeastern’s University Without Walls Program. Dr. Glick was the principal architect of Northeastern’s Criminal Justice Department and has served as Coordinator of the Sociology Program and as Chair of Northeastern’s Faculty Senate. Between 1987 and 1999 he served as the Project Coordinator or Project Director of the six successive two-year grants the university received from the U. S. Department of Education for substance abuse prevention in higher education. Since 1993 he has served as Director of the Network for Dissemination of Curriculum Infusion (NDCI) which was funded by the U. S. Department of Education from 1993 to 1999 to nationally disseminate the substance abuse prevention strategy of integrating prevention content into courses across the curriculum. For the past four years he has directed the NDCI Teacher Education Project which prepares future teachers at four Chicago area Colleges of Education to integrate drug prevention into k-12 classes across the curriculum. The NDCI is currently engaged with the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities Program of the Chicago Public Schools providing curriculum infusion training to teachers in the low income Latino West Town community. Professor Glick is experienced in cross-cultural issues related to substance abuse. His research and publications are on prevention and on drug abuse in the Latino community. He co-edited Drugs in Hispanic Communities (Rutgers Press, 1990).

Bruce Joleaud, Project Coordinator. Mr. Joleaud holds a Masters degree in Counseling Psychology from the Adler School of Professional Psychology and is a Certified Supervisor Alcohol and Drug Counselor and a National Certified Addiction Counselor II. He began work in the field of mental health in 1971 and a specialty in addictions in 1977. Since 1982 he has provided both addictions counseling and prevention training and consultation in a variety of f and settings throughout the Midwest. He has worked as the Clinical Training Director/Senior Manager for Healthcare Alternative Systems, Inc., a Latino based addictions treatment and prevention agency with multiple locations in Chicago, and for eleven years was Coordinator of Grant Hospital’s Clinical Training Program for Addictions Counselors (CTPAC). Mr. Joleaud was a Founding Member of the Illinois Alcohol / Drug Counselor Training Program Director’s Consortium and served as the Chair from 1992 to 1995. He is co-author of The Training Life: Living and Learning in the Substance Abuse Field and was the Co-host of Chemically Independent, a cable television talk show about issues in recovery. He has served as prevention consultant for the Network for Dissemination of Curriculum Infusion and other university grant programs since 1987 and has been the prevention grants Project Coordinator since 1998.

Nadia Parreno, Assistant Project Coordinator, holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Southern Illinois University.  Ms. Parreno served as a Community Liaison for DuPage Prevention Partnership.  There she developed strategies to address prevention and education issues for youth and adults in Latino communities.  She evaluated and updated DuPage County after-school programs, and built partnerships between community organizations, businesses, schools, social service and law enforcement agencies.   She also served as a research assistant for Harvard University’s study, “The Project on Human Development in the Chicago Neighborhoods”.  This was an 8 year longitudinal study where she conducted extensive field work throughout the city of Chicago. 

Brian R. Flay, External Evaluator, holds a doctorate in philosophy from Waikato University and is a University of Illinois at Chicago distinguished professor and former director of the Health Research Policy Centers, UIC (9/97-7/00) and Prevention Research Center, SPH, UIC (10/87-8/97). He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including a Research Laureate from the American Academy of Health Behavior (2001) and a University of Texas-Houston John P. McGovern Award in Health Promotion (2000). Dr. Flay has been the primary author or contributed to 156 journal articles and chapters in 31 books with several other articles or chapters currently in press or under review. He is the author of Selling the Smokeless Society: 56 Evaluated Programs Worldwide (American Public Health Association, 1987) and co-author of Developing School-based Tobacco Use Prevention and Cessation Programs (Sage Publications, 1995) and has provided research support on projects totaling over 80 million dollars. He is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences and has participated in numerous advisory groups/committees for organizations such as the National Academies of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hamid Akbari, Training Consultant. Hamid Akbari, Ph. D., is Associate Professor of Management and Chair of the Department of Management and Marketing at Northeastern Illinois University. Professor Akbari earned his doctorate in Business Administration at Ohio State University. He was in the first group of faculty selected to infuse prevention into their courses at Northeastern. Since 1988 he has served as a dissemination consultant for Northeastern prevention grants, providing workshops, training and consultation to faculty designing prevention content for their courses. Dr. Akbari’s research and publications focus on leadership, entrepreneurship, and teaching pedagogy. His research background is in qualitative methods.

Shellie Coleman, Project Consultant. Ms. Coleman, B.A., has more than 30 years in the prevention field, being one of the founding members of the National Association of Prevention Professionals and an early advocate of a systems approach to positive change.   She has delivered training workshops in this area for many years. In addition to her training skills, Ms. Coleman has an extensive management background. She has served as director of community-based programs as well as manager of the Chicago Office of the Prevention Resource Center, and as Director of Prevention for Gateway Youth Care Foundation. In the past several years, as an independent consultant, Ms. Coleman has provided training and consultation for Children’s Research Triangle’s Children of Substance Abusing Parents Project, Chicago Public Schools Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities, Archdiocese of Chicago Office of Catholic Education, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, and the Chicago Department of Health. Ms. Coleman is a 1997 Join Together Leadership Fellow.

Eleni Makris, Faculty Development

Wamucii Njogu, Evaluation Consultant is Associate Professor of Sociology at Northeastern Illinois University. Dr. Njogu earned her doctorate from the University of Wisconsin Madison, specializing in Demography and Research Methods. Dr. Njogu teaches Statistics, Research Methods, and Demography. Her research has focused on demographic change and reproductive health in Africa. She is currently working on an American Bar Foundation funded project that examines the experiences of women and minority professors in law schools and colleges of arts and sciences.

Job Elom Ngwe, Evaluation Consultant, is Assistant Professor of Social Work at Northeastern Illinois University. Dr. Ngwe holds a Doctorate degree in Community Health Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He teaches Social Work Research Methods and Community Analysis Courses. Dr. Ngwe’s research expertise is in the area of planning, implementation, and evaluation of school- and community-based prevention programs dealing with prevention of violence, substance abuse and unsafe sexual behaviors among youth.  Dr. Ngwe was involved in a seven-year longitudinal study dealing with the above issues, and designed and implemented a peer mediation program in four elementary schools in Chicago. Also, Dr. Ngwe has over 15 years of teaching experience in elementary and high schools in the United States and Canada.

E. L. Rohan T. de Silva, Evaluation Consultant, is assistant professor of sociology at NEIU and holds a doctorate from Northwestern in Sociology specializing in sociology of education and social stratification. Doctoral dissertation on teaching strategies at urban commuter colleges. Master's Degree from UIC in Criminal Justice, master's thesis evaluated Neighborhood Watch programs

Claudia Rueda-Alvarez, Training Consultant, has worked in the field of education for over 15 years. She received both, her undergraduate degree in Elementary Education with an ESL/Bilingual endorsement, and her Masters of Arts degree in School Counseling from Northeastern Illinois University, and her Ph.D. from Loyola University in Chicago. She has worked as an elementary teacher, high school counselor, and currently holds the position of Assistant Professor in the Counselor Education department at Northeastern Illinois University. Dr. Rueda-Alvarez has presented multicultural workshops for the Illinois Counselor Association (ICA), the Illinois Association for Multicultural Counseling (IAMC), school districts across the Northwest suburbs, and other professional organizations.

Project Assistants

Amy Brooks, B.A. – Graduate Assistant
Georgiann Davis, B.A. – Research Assistant
George Rhee, B.S. – Website Specialist
Virginia Rossi, B.A. – Research Assistant

Campus Coordinators 

Sandra Beyda, Ph.D – Northeastern Illinois University
Ann Marie Frank, Ph.D – DePaul University
Shaine Hennert, Ph.D – Chicago State University
Marisa Reyes, Ph.D – North Park University

Participating Faculty 

Chicago State University
Mary Grace Bator
Cathryn Busch
Pamela Cannamore
Indranie Dharmadasa
Gayles Evans
Nancy Grim
Cindy Groh
Trena Hawkins
Shaine Henert
Mark Kufame
Phyllis Merkin
Olive Ndacasaba
Marge Neal
Sureshrani Paintal
Jashu Patel
Charlene Snelling
Cindy Valenciano
Jackie Young

Northeastern Illinois University
Rachel Adeodu
Sandra Beyda Lorie
Lynn Bush
Elaine Pierce Chakonas
Alice Giacobbe
Annann Hong
Elaine Koffman
Effie Kritikos
Eleni Makris
Claudia Rueda-Alvarez
Katherine Smith
Terri Stirling
Fredric Tarnow
Joaquin Villegas

North Park University
Jean Dames
Jackie Feare
Diana Hernandez-Azcoitia
Gerald Palmer
Marisa Reyes

Advisory Board 

Debbie Bretag, Executive Director – Illinois Center for Violence Prevention
Nan Giblin, Dean of College of Education – Northeastern Illinois University
Diana Hernandez-Azcoitia, Director of College of Education – North Park University
Myrna Torres, Director of Programs – Prevention First, INC.
Dr. Sandra Westbrook, Dean of College of Education – Chicago State University

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