ELIZABETH KANDEL ENGLANDER

Elizabeth Kandel Englander is a professor of Psychology and the founder and Director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State College, a Center which delivers anti-violence and anti-bullying programs, resources, and research for the state of Massachusetts. She is a nationally recognized expert in the area of bullying and cyberbullying, childhood causes of violence and aggression, child development, and characteristics of juvenile and adult violent offenders.

Dr. Englander was a Presidential Undergraduate Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, graduating with High Honors and membership in Phi Beta Kappa and Psi Chi. She was awarded an All- University Predoctoral Merit Fellowship at the University of Southern California, where she completed her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology in 1989. She was a National Institute of Mental Health Research Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of New Hampshire before beginning her teaching career in the State College system in Massachusetts. Since founding the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center she has trained thousands of teachers and administrators in Massachusetts, worked with thousands of schoolchildren, parents and community groups, conducted and published research on the topic of cyberbullying, authored the third edition of a text, and helped write legislation to help prevent violence and bullying. Each year she trains and supervises graduate and undergraduate students and collaborates with multiple agencies around the State of Massachusetts and across the nation.

She is the first recipient of the Presidential Fellowship at Bridgewater State College, and her expertise in children’s violence led to her appointment to the Advisory Boards for several organizations and to the Executive Committee for the mental health component of the Attorney General's Safe Schools Initiative under former Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly. She has collaborated with the Massachusetts State Senate in developing legislation and has testified as an expert before the Senate. She was chosen for the Massachusetts Campus Safety Task Force through the Department of Higher Education.

The Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center has grown exponentially since its inception in 2004. The only academic Center in Massachusetts to both conduct cutting-edge research and deliver no-cost services to tens of thousands of educators, children, and communities and parents in Massachusetts, it now consists of four faculty members, a research associate, two administrative staff, four graduate assistants, and twenty undergraduate students. MARC has attracted funding from Safe and Drug Free Schools, the Office of Public Safety and Security, the District Attorney’s Office in Plymouth County, the Community Foundation of Southeastern Massachusetts, and the North Central Massachusetts Community Foundation. Its work is increasingly focusing on educating children, parents, and communities about cyberbullying and cyber-issues, which are in the forefront of youth violence today. The variety of professional interests and fields in the Center (Psychology, Computer Science, Communications, Education, Counseling, Social Work, and Criminal Justice) greatly improves and informs the Center’s research and fieldwork.

Dr. Englander is the author of more than three dozen articles in journals and books, and Understanding Violence, a standard text in the field of child development, biological psychology, and violent criminal behavior, which was recently released in its third edition. Her work in educating laypeople about cyber-dangers has been noticed by the United States Department of Education and dozens of news organizations. She has been cited on hundreds of occasions in the print media and has appeared on both local and national television and radio across the country and in Canada. She works and lives in Massachusetts.