She earned a Bachelor’s in Sociology from Western Kentucky University and completed both her Master’s and PhD at Bowling Green State University. Her dissertation, titled An Examination of Violent Victimization from Adolescence to Adulthood, focuses on group-based trajectories of violent victimization experiences from adolescence to adulthood and what factors help to explain differences in long-term experiences of victimization as individuals move from one stage of the life course to the next.