About CORE
Empowering
Youth.
Elevating
Communities.
Our Mission
Empowering Students of All Ages and Elevating the Communities they Call Home.
Our mission is to cultivate a holistic, intentional, and interdisciplinary approach to positive youth development by promoting children and adolescents’ resilience and prosocial behavior.
Our Rich History
CORE was established in 1998 to provide research, evaluation, and proposal development services to teen pregnancy prevention providers. The Center has broadened the original focus of teen pregnancy prevention to encompass healthy youth development. CORE is dedicated to achieving excellence in client services through an ongoing commitment to education, research, and the Erie community.
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.
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