Laurie Garo

Related People
Beth Murray

Teaching and Research Interests

  • Trauma from Violence; impacts on brain development, behavior and learning
  • Trauma-sensitive interventions in Urban Education
  • Urban Education and School Discipline Reform
  • Community empowerment through social and environmental justice
  • Culturally responsive community and social justice curricula and pedagogy
  • Digital Media and Geospatial Technologies for Storytelling and Student Engagement
  • GIScience & Technology, Crime Analysis and Cartographic Design

Education

  • PhD (2017) Curriculum & Instruction – Urban Education , University of North Carolina at Charlotte
  • MA. (1984) Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • B.A. (1978) Geography, University of California-Los Angeles

Profile

I am a lecturer and researcher specializing in Crime Analysis and Mapping, Delinquency and Gang Prevention, Youth Trauma Vulnerability Modeling using GIS, and Education Interventions for Children and Youth Traumatized by Violence. I have extensive teaching, production and project management experience in Cartography as well. I have served as a research analyst and community outreach specialist for the Department of Justice’s Project Safe Neighborhoods, where I made use of police, sheriff, corrections, school, social, health, and juvenile justice data, plus interviews, and site visits with community residents and non-profit organizations to study root causes of juvenile delinquency and to recommend, write grants for, and evaluate intervention and prevention strategies from culture, gender and faith-relevant perspectives. I have a heart for service to the intervention and prevention of juvenile delinquency, with special compassion for those youth who find themselves most marginalized and disenfranchised from school, community, peers and society at large, and those who are system-involved. In this light, I have established and directed the Youth Leadership Academy, a grant funded youth empowerment initiative that prepares young people with the practical skills to become productive, self-fulfilled and achievement-oriented adults and community leaders. And I co-founded and facilitated the Belmont Diamonds Youth Council, a child leadership program for kids ages 5-12.

I have a PhD in Curriculum & Instruction – Urban Education from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, an MA in Cartography (Geography) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an more than 20 years of experience in university teaching, training and project management. Nine of those years were overseas in Kenya and in Papua New Guinea where I developed a keen sense for the integral roles that culture and faith play in children’s healthy development and in the sustenance of community as a whole.