Empowering
Youth.
Elevating
Communities.
Welcome!
We’re Glad You Found Susan Hirt Hagen CORE.
We are committed to providing schools and organizations high quality resources to improve outcomes for youth and the communities they call home. Whether you need a tailored mentoring experience for your school, a training for your organization, or research services for your program, we’re here to help.
Community
Outreach.
The Community Outreach team designs and implements evidence-based mentoring programs for students. In addition, our team develops and delivers high level trainings on topics such as trauma informed approaches, resilience, peer mistreatment, adolescent development, and mentoring best practices.
Research &
Evaluation.
As a research center of Penn State Behrend, we have access to world class faculty and resources that allows us to perform both basic and applied research within the community. Our R&E team specializes in all aspects of program evaluation - we are here to help guide your team in making data-driven informed decisions to effectively meet your goals.
Featured Student
Meet Zach
Zach graduated from Purdue University in 2021 with Research Focused Honors in Psychological Sciences. He is currently a graduate student in the Applied Clinical Psychology Program at Penn State Behrend where he is a recipient of the ACPSY Research scholarship. Zach is actively engaged as a Graduate Research Assistant at Susan Hirt Hagen CORE, where he works closely on our research and program validation initiatives. He also supervises two of our sites for The Mentor Project.
CORE Leadership
James J. Hodge, Ph.D.
Director
Charisse Nixon, Ph.D.
Associate Director
Kristin Hesch, M.S.
Associate Director of Community Outreach
Megan E. LaMotte, Ph.D.
Associate Director of Research & Evaluation
Let’s Start the Conversation!
If you are interested in learning more about how CORE can help you, we invite you to reach out to us. One of our team members will be happy to connect with you.