Jess Lucero
Social Work
Department Head | Social Work
Contact Information
Office Location: Logan (MAIN 239D)Phone: +1 435 797 9122
Email: jessica.lucero@usu.edu
Educational Background
- PhD - Wayne State University - 2012
- MSW - University of Wyoming - 2008
- BSW - University of Wyoming - 2007
Emphasis
Research Methods, Community Practice, Family Violence
Expertise
Neighborhood Effects, Community Capacity Building, Housing Justice, Homelessness, Refugees in the U.S., Partner Violence, Teen Dating Violence, Community-Engaged Teaching, Program Evaluation
Biography
Dr. Lucero is the Department Head of the Department of Social Work at Utah State University where she also serves as Associate Professor of Social Work, Graduate Director for their Full-Time MSW Program and Director of the Transforming Communities Institute. Prior to joining the faculty at USU, she completed her doctoral studies at Wayne State University in Detroit and her MSW and BSW at the University of Wyoming. Lucero’s research orientation is very interdisciplinary, and she enjoys exchanging ideas and working to improve social systems with other interdisciplinary scholars, practitioners, and students who are committed to social justice. Dr. Lucero is a nationally recognized scholar in community-based participatory research – she is particularly interested in research that produces real-world recommendations for solving the complex challenges that communities face. Specifically, her community-based research centers on violence prevention and intervention, challenges facing refugees in the U.S., and housing justice issues. Her work in the community does the same. She is a member of the Local Homeless Coordinating Council and board member on Utah’s Balance of State Continuum of Care board. In addition, she is a commissioner for the Logan City Planning Commission and the Board President for Cache Refugee and Immigrant Connection, a nonprofit that she helped found in 2014. She actively involves her students in housing justice work at the local and state level, and she finds great joy in teaching community practice and research methods from a community-engaged perspective in which her students get out in their communities and meet community-identified needs.