Project Staff Members

Michael Slater is a professor of Journalism and Technical Communication at Colorado State University and has conducted extensive research on health communication campaigns, substance use prevention, alcohol and cigarette advertising, and youth.  He has been the principal investigator for projects funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and he has served as a consultant for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Ruth W. Edwards is a research scientist at the Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention Research.  Dr. Edwards has served as a research scientist and principal investigator/co-principal investigator of a series of grants from NIDA and the CDC over a period of almost 20 years. She has published extensively on rural issues as well as community readiness and has maintained a primary research focus on substance use and other deviant behaviors, including violence and the resulting victimization.

Pamela Jumper Thurman, a research associate at the Tri-Ethnic Center, has extensive experience in working with ethnic and underserved populations, particularly Native American, Alaskan Native, and Mexican-American.  She has provided technical assistance to address social problems, including drug and alcohol use, violence prevention, environmental issues, etc.

Barbara Plested, a research associate with the Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention Research, also has extensive experience working with ethnic communities throughout the lower 48 states and Alaska.  She is one of the authors of the Community Readiness Scale and is currently overseeing reliability and validity studies and development of taped training materials for community readiness interviewers.  She has worked with numerous community groups, adapting the Community Readiness approach to address specific community problems.

William Hansen is one of America’s leading innovators and researchers in the area of in-school substance use prevention programs.  He has published over 80 articles on substance abuse prevention among youth and has been largely responsible for the development of  pioneering in-school substance prevention programs. All Stars represents the culmination of over 20 years of work by Dr. Hansen in developing research-based, in-school substance prevention programs.

Beverly Marquart is a research associate with the Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention Research in the department of Psychology, Colorado State University.  She has twelve years of experience in research and direct service delivery to adolescent populations.  She is currently serving as Field Director for a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) grant that examines how individual risk factors relate to substance use and delinquency of rural youth.  Her current areas of research interest also include cross-cultural adolescent substance use, community readiness, and violence issues.

Kathleen Nelson Simley  has worked as a professional in the field of substance abuse prevention for 12 years in Nebraska.  She founded the Nebraska Network of Drug Free Youth in 1988, which today has a membership of over 3,000 youth.  Over the past year, she has recruited and trained more than 130 individuals from over 75 schools in Nebraska in the All Stars substance abuse prevention program.

Kathleen Kelly is Associate Professor of Marketing at Colorado State University and has served as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator of several substance abuse prevention programs for youth funded by the NIDA and by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  Her work focuses on applying advertising and marketing techniques to communicating effectively with youth about substance abuse.