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Our Staff

Note: If you have any questions about Blueprints programs and/or certification, please email the Blueprints team at blueprints@colorado.edu.

Pamela Buckley portrait

Pamela Buckley, Ph.D.

Principal Investigator 

Dr. Buckley is a research associate professor in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her expertise includes statistics, intervention research, evaluation methodology, and policy analysis. She has authored half a dozen peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, over 30 technical reports, and has had her research supported by the Institute of Education Sciences. Dr. Buckley has worked extensively with large data sets, analysis tools, and advanced statistical techniques. A former school psychologist, she also has considerable experience consulting in classrooms with teachers, students, families and communities. She has served as the methodologist on a randomized control trial for programs to improve literacy skills among middle school youth, and was principal investigator on a quasi-experimental design to evaluate a policy for reducing college attainment gaps in Colorado. Dr. Buckley is a certified reviewer in Group Design (versions 2.1 and 3.0) for What Works Clearinghouse. She has also attended several workshops funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, including the Summer Research Training Institute on the Design and Analysis of Quasi-Experiments, the Summer Research Training Institute on Cluster-Randomized Trials, and the Meta-Analysis Training Institute. Dr. Buckley has a doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of Denver. She has worked for Blueprints since 2016.

Publications on ORCID

Karl G. Hill, Ph.D.

Co-Principal Investigator

Dr. Hill is the director of the Program on Problem Behavior and Positive Youth Development and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Program includes Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, and a newly funded Center for Resilience and Well-being in Schools. Dr. Hill’s work over the last 30 years has focused on understanding two questions: What are optimal family, peer, school and community environments that encourage healthy youth and adult development? And: How do we work with communities to make this happen? Prior to CU Boulder, he worked for 23 years at the University of Washington as a professor and prevention scientist where he sought to understand the development and consequences of prosocial outcomes as well as antisocial behaviors such as drug use and dependence, crime, and gang membership, and the mechanisms of continuity and discontinuity in these behaviors across generations. In addition, his work has focused on developing and testing interventions to shape these outcomes, and on working with communities to improve youth development and to break intergenerational cycles of problem behavior. Dr. Hill became PI of Blueprints in July 2018.

Publications on ORCID

Fred Pampel

Fred Pampel, Ph.D.

Faculty Research Associate

Dr. Pampel is a research professor of sociology at the University of Colorado and a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Behavioral Science. His expertise includes demography, health, inequality, research methods, and statistical analysis. For several decades, he taught basic and advanced statistics to undergraduate and graduate students in the sociology department. He is the author of 12 books and over 80 peer-reviewed research articles in professional journals. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. In the area of evaluation research, he has served as the methodologist in RCTs and QEDs for programs to improve the literacy of minority preschoolers, provide short-term counseling for government workers, integrate care for Medicaid patients with chronic health problems, reduce the recidivism of offenders on probation, and reduce violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Dr. Pampel has a post doctorate degree in sociology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has worked for the Blueprints program since 2012.

Christine Steeger, Ph.D.

Assistant Research Professor 

Dr. Steeger is a assistant research professor in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. In 2013, she earned her doctorate degree in developmental psychology at the University of Notre Dame. Her training and expertise are in prevention science, developmental psychopathology, etiology of youth problem behaviors, and individual and family-based interventions. Her methodological expertise includes designing, implementing, and evaluating preventive interventions, focusing on change over time. She has experience conducting an RCT of a combined cognitive and parent training intervention for adolescents with ADHD and their mothers, which is published in Child Neuropsychology. She participated in the 2018 Summer Research Training Institute on Cluster-Randomized Trials at Northwestern University, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the National Center for Education Research (NCER). Dr. Steeger has worked on the Blueprints project since 2017.

Publications on ORCID

Charleen Gust, Ph.D.

Research Associate

Dr. Gust recently completed her doctoral training in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder. She joined Blueprints as a full-time research associate in July 2023. Her research interests broadly lie at the intersection of social and health psychology. Specific research areas include: (1) strategies to increase exercise adherence, both across the lifespan and in the context of other health behaviors (e.g., cannabis use); (2) health equity; and (3) yoga-based practices, particularly with regard to potential self-regulatory and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying yoga’s health-promoting effects. Dr. Gust has worked on the Blueprints project since 2018.

Publications on ORCID

Amanda Ladika

Blueprints Manager

Amanda has 30 years of experience as a researcher in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. As Blueprints manager, she supports the internal review process, works with developers of certified programs on dissemination readiness, prepares program-specific content for the public registry, and assists in planning the biennial Blueprints conference. She also serves as the data analyst for the process evaluation of a corporate-funded multi-state dissemination of LifeSkills Training, a Blueprints model program. Previously, she worked as an analyst and field manager on a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to replicate and evaluate in randomized controlled trials two of the Blueprints promising programs. She has served in similar capacity on multiple grants surveying youths and their parents to examine the etiology of both delinquent behavior and successful adolescent development.

Contact

Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development
University of Colorado Boulder
Institute of Behavioral Science
UCB 483, Boulder, CO 80309

Email: blueprints@colorado.edu

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Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development is
currently funded by Arnold Ventures (formerly the Laura and John Arnold Foundation) and historically has received funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.