Rate My Professor Karen Miller

Dr. Karen Miller is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Criminal Justice, and Organizational Leadership at Northern Kentucky University, with a focus in Criminal Justice. She holds a Ph.D. and has held prominent leadership positions, including Department Chair until June 30, 2024, and current Program Director. She served as a dedicated leader of the Master of Public Administration program for seven years, steering it through reaccreditation and the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, Dr. Miller coordinates internships for the Criminal Justice program, guiding students in Founders Hall 561H. She presented faculty awards at the College of Arts and Sciences convocation and was granted a sabbatical leave for Spring 2025 to pursue significant projects. These included collaborating with Dr. Robert Sarver from the University of South Carolina Upstate on research examining academic bullying in U.S. academia; they developed a survey instrument and conducted a literature review on its prevalence, types, consequences, and intersectional aspects among faculty and administrators, with subsequent plans for IRB approval, data collection, and analysis. She also completed Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) training covering child development, mental health, and trauma-informed advocacy, and worked on a case advocating for two siblings in foster care within family court proceedings.

Dr. Miller's scholarly work centers on criminology and related social phenomena, as demonstrated by her publications: "Blaming the Victim: University Student Attitudes Toward Bullying" (2016), "Blaming the victim: University students’ attitudes towards bullying" (2013), "Exit Stage Left: A Dramaturgical Analysis of Media Accounts of Executions in America" (2008), "The Myth of the Juvenile Superpredator" (2006), and "Scamming: An ethnographic study of workplace crime in the retail food industry" (1997), which have garnered 59 citations. Through her administrative roles, teaching, internship coordination, and research contributions, Dr. Miller has made substantial impacts on criminal justice education, public administration training, and scholarly discourse on victimology, media portrayals of punishment, juvenile justice perceptions, and workplace deviance at Northern Kentucky University.