Bio:
Dr. Susan Rakosi Rosenbloom (Dr. RR) completed two years of public service with AmeriCorps Project SafetyNet on the Lower East Side while a doctoral student at New York University (PhD. Sociology). She teaches courses in Urban Education, Public Sociology, Digital Society and Childhood/Youth. Partnering with the Center for Civic Engagement, she trains Drew Action Scholars by teaching Innovation Action Lab, Senior Civic Workshop and Thinking Through Social Problems. She expertly guides civically engaged students designing collaborative projects from idea to project implementation and assessment.
As the co-Principal Investigator of “Neighbors in Need”, a multi-year community based research grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service, she led a team of community stakeholders to improve voucher use among the homeless in Morris County, NJ. Partnering with the Orange Public Schools, Newark Public Schools and too many housing agencies to name, Dr. RR implements community based learning classes to engage students in capacity building in under-resourced neighborhoods. In these contexts and the classroom, she’s interested in how new digital technologies shape all aspects of research, civic engagement, community storytelling, teaching and communications.
Her professional research, community based research, education and digital projects have been funded by Corporation for National and Community Service, AmeriCorps, William T. Grant Foundation, Spencer Foundation, American Sociological Association, Murray Research Center at Radcliffe, Mellon Drew Digital Humanities Grant and the Morris County, NJ Continuum of Care.
She is the author of The Multiracial Urban High School: Fearing Peers and Trusting Friends(2010), a four year study about how school shapes teens’ friendships. Other published research includes topics such as: racial/ethnic discrimination among minority youth (Youth and Society), peer group dynamics (Sociological Studies of Childhood/Youth), school choice policy (Urban Review), the emotional content of social movement protest (City Limits) and the complexities of classroom self-disclosure (Teaching Sociology). She also researches strategies to prevent homelessness through voucher use (Finding Housing in Morris County, NJ: Report), child soldiers as a new social problem (Qualitative Sociology) and vaccination decision-making among emerging adults (American Journal of Sexuality Education).
In addition to her academic work, she is raising two children and a pitbull, caring for an elderly parent, learning hydroponics, and trail running in the Ramapo Mountains of NJ.