Welcome
SHSSW Phone: (512) 471-1003 Email: hmccoy@austin.utexas.edu
Dr. Henrika McCoy is the Ruby Lee Piester Centennial Fellow in Services to Children and Families and Associate Professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work (SHSSW) at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a Faculty Affiliate for the Moritz Center for Social Impact at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, University of Texas at Austin; a Faculty Affiliate for the Initiative for Law, Societies, and Justice at the University of Texas at Austin; and a Faculty Affiliate for the Texas Center for Social Equity Promotion in the College of Education, University of Texas at Austin.
She has a Master of Social Work (MSW) from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master of Jurisprudence (MJ) from Loyola University Chicago, and a PhD from the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to joining the faculty at SHSSW, she was an Assistant and Associate Professor and Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Student Services at the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois Chicago and an Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work at Boston College.
Dr. McCoy conducts her research in partnership with community members/experts and predominately focuses her efforts in two areas. First, she examines how mental health issues precipitate the involvement of Black boys into the juvenile legal system while also exploring how those mental health issues are identified and their related experiences and outcomes. Second, she focuses on better identifying and understanding the violent victimization experiences of young Black males ages 18 to 24. Beyond those areas, she examines the outcomes experiences of disenfranchised and vulnerable populations and overall her scholarship explores the impact of structural and systemic racism on Black persons in America.
In November 2021, she became a Co-Investigator for the National Institute of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funded longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Social Development Study (ABCD-SD) which measures delinquency and victimization at five sites of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. The project was initially funded FY17 and thus far has received funding totaling $11,076,120. Dr. Lia Ahonen and Dr. Duncan Clark serve as Co-Principal Investigators. She is a Project Senior Technical Advisor for the Arnold Ventures five-year $1,781,351 funded A Multisite Randomized Evaluation of PeaceRox, a School-based Violence Reduction Program. Dr. Becky Petit serves as the Principal Investigator. She also serves as a Mentor for the Arnold Ventures funded Racial Democracy Criminal Justice Network’s (RDCJN) Improving Fairness and Justice in Community Supervision: Small Grants Program, Increasing Participation in ATLAS, A New York City Pretrial Alternative-to-Supervision, funded for $100,000. The Co-Principal Investigators are Dr. Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill, and Assistant Professor at Arizona State University and Dr. Andrea M. Headley at Georgetown University.
Dr. McCoy has focused on the intersection of mental health and juvenile delinquency, particularly for African American males. In 2008, her dissertation was funded by the Fahs Beck Fund for Research and Experimentation. Her study included primary data collection from two Midwestern detention facilities obtained from 90 Black and White juvenile offenders age 12 to 17. She examined the measurement equivalence of the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument version 2 (MAYSI-2) and subsequently made recommendations regarding how to strengthen the instrument's screening abilities. In 2009, she was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, New Connections program for a 25-month study titled A Strategy for Promoting the Mental Health of and Decreasing the Negative Trajectories for Juvenile Offenders in the amount of $75,000. She was later funded as a Faculty Fellow for the 2013-2014 academic year by the University of Illinois at Chicago, Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy to continue that research. That research uses historical data from two Midwest detention facilities to better understand the realities, experiences, and trajectories of youth with mental health disorders in the juvenile justice system.
Between October 1, 2015 and September 30, 2018, she served as the principal investigator of the National Institute of Justice funded study Understanding the Violent Victimization Experiences of Young Men of Color (SURVIVE). The cooperative agreement was a 3-year, national study funded in the amount of $1.5 million dollars. The project will fill the gap in our knowledge base about the violent victimization experiences of young Black males ages 18 to 24. With her co-investigator, Dr. Timothy Johnson, Director of the Survey Research Laboratory at the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and his team, they created and pilot tested an instrument that measures such experiences, as well as identifies the coping skills and types of supports used by the young men.
Additionally, between May 16, 2015 and September 29, 2017, Dr. McCoy served as the new principal investigator for 3/40 BLUEPRINT: Creating the Blueprint to Reduce LGBTQ Youth Homelessness. The $1,050,000 project was funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration on Children, Youth and Families (Dr. Alan Dettlaff was the original Principal Investigator for the project; he selected Dr. McCoy to continue its leadership when be became the Dean of the University of Houston School of Social Work. ) The project sought to facilitate positive outcomes for LGBTQ homeless youth by conducting a systematic review of existing literature; a comprehensive needs assessment; and a systematic identification and analysis of screening and assessment tools and existing and emerging practices for Runaway and Homeless Youth providers.
Dr. McCoy has also engaged in a wide range of professional service. As of November 2023, she will begin a three-year term as an Executive Counselor for the American Society of Criminology (ASC). For the ASC Division on People of Color and Crime (DPCC) for she previously served as Co-Chair of the Mentoring Committee, Executive Counselor, and Co-Chair. She currently serves as Co-Program Chair for the 2024 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) Annual Meeting. For the Society for Social and Work Research she has served on the Board of Directors as a Director-at-Large, Co-Chair for the Adolescent and Youth Development Cluster, a member of the Research Capacity and Development Committee, and a member of the Doctoral Fellows Review and Selection Committee. She is currently a Co-Program Chair for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) 2024 Annual Meeting. Dr. McCoy previously served a three-year term on the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) Council on Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Diversity. She currently serves on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation and Children and Youth Services Review. In addition, she previously as a member of the Editorial Board for the journal Child and Adolescent Social Work.
Her professional service has extended to the community where she has also engaged with various organizations. She is currently in the Institutional Review Board of Beloved Community in New Orleans, LA. Dr. McCoy was an Invited Member of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA) Restore, Reinvest, and Renew Program (R3) Evaluation Working Group and R3 Working Group. She was also an Invited Member of the Office of the City of Chicago, Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot Public Safety Research Advisory Council.
Dr. McCoy has been acknowledged for her contributions and received a number of honorifics. While on faculty at Jane Addams College of Social Work (UIC) she was awarded the Jane Addams Excellence in Social Work Education Award and the UIC Council for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Teacher Recognition Program Award. In 2022, she became a Society for Social Work and Research Fellow and was selected by the ASC Division on People of Color and Crime for the Julius Debro Award. In 2023, she was selected for the ACJS Critical Criminal Justice Section, Critical Criminal Justice Scholar Award.
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