Rate My Professor Tia Andersen

Tia Stevens Andersen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina, holding a joint appointment in Women’s and Gender Studies. She earned a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice with a cognate in Intersectional Approaches to Inequality from Michigan State University in 2013, an M.A. in Sociology with a specialization in Criminology from Bowling Green State University in 2006, and a B.A. in Sociology with a concentration in Criminal Justice from Oakland University in 2004. Joining the University of South Carolina in 2013 as an Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, she advanced to Associate Professor with tenure in 2019 and expanded her joint appointment in Women’s and Gender Studies in 2025. Additional roles include affiliate faculty in African American Studies since 2014 and Research Affiliate with the Research Consortium on Children and Families since 2013.

Andersen utilizes qualitative and mixed-methods research to explore how exclusionary school discipline, juvenile justice policies, and structural inequalities shape youth experiences, especially in alternative educational contexts. Drawing on feminist criminology and intersectional frameworks, her studies examine the influences of gender, race, trauma, victimization, and place on pathways into delinquency, alternative schooling, and justice involvement, alongside mentoring's role in disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline and promoting resilience and positive youth development. She directs a university-community mentoring program matching college students with youth in disciplinary alternative schools and leads a National Science Foundation-funded multi-year longitudinal study tracking expelled youth to identify protective factors. Her scholarship has appeared in Feminist Criminology, Crime & Delinquency, Journal of Community Psychology, Children and Youth Services Review, Deviant Behavior, and Journal of Family Violence. Select publications include “Promoting Positive Youth Development Through Mentoring: A University-School Partnership in an Alternative Education Setting” (forthcoming, Journal of Youth Development), “Being a Mentor in the Digital Era: An Exploratory Study of the Benefits Undergraduate Student Mentors Derived from Providing Virtual Mentoring to Youth” (2023, Journal of Community Psychology), “Exploring U.S. news media portrayals of girls’ violence in the 1980s and 1990s: The emergence of a moral panic” (2023, Routledge Companion to Gender, Media, and Violence), and “Juvenile court outcomes following youths’ first arrest: A national test of the racial and ethnic threat hypothesis” (2019, Crime & Delinquency). Andersen has earned the Mary Baskin Waters Service Learning Award (2022), Garnet Apple Award for Teaching Innovation (2021), Peter and Bonnie McCausland Fellowship (2020-2023), Creed Champion Award (2019), Two Thumbs Up Award (2019), and Stand Up Carolina Hero Award (2018).