Susan Swearer

Chair, Department of Educational Psychology, Willa Cather Professor of Educational Psychology, Professor and Licensed Psychologist, School Psychology Program

Ph.D., 1997, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX. School Psychology. APA accredited School Psychology Program.
M.A., 1993, The University of Texas at Austin. School Psychology. APA and NASP accredited School Psychology Program
M.S., 1989, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. Special Education.
B.A., 1987, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA. Psychology

Dr. Susan M. Swearer is the Willa Cather Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Psychology and Professor of School Psychology at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. She is a licensed psychologist, co-director of the Bullying Research Network (http://brnet.unl.edu) and director of the Nebraska Bullying Prevention and Intervention Initiative (http://empowerment.unl.edu).  Dr. Swearer received her B.A. in Psychology from Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA; her M.S. in Special Education from the Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA; and her Ph.D. in School Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, TX. She completed an APA-approved internship with the Nebraska Internship Consortium in Professional Psychology at Boys Town in Omaha, NE.

For the past two decades, Dr. Swearer has developed and implemented a data-based decision-making model for responding to bullying among school-aged youth and has conducted staff trainings in elementary, middle, and high schools, and higher education settings with the goal of helping to establish cost-effective and data-based strategies to reduce bullying behaviors. She is the co-author of, Bullying Prevention and Intervention: Realistic Strategies for Schools (2009) and co-editor of the books, Handbook of Bullying in Schools: An International Perspective (2010) and Bullying in North American Schools, 2^nd edition (2011). Dr. Swearer has authored over 100 book chapters and articles on the topics of bullying, depression, and anxiety in school-aged youth. Her Target Bullying Intervention Program was featured on CBS Sunday Morning in February 2011; she was an invited presenter at the White House Bullying Prevention Conference in March 2011; and she was a panelist at the launch of Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation in February 2012 at Harvard University. In March 2012, Dr. Swearer was a featured bullying expert on Anderson Cooper’s daytime show, “Anderson.” From January 2013-March 2013, she toured with Lady Gaga and the Born This Way Foundation on the Born Brave Bus, a youth empowerment experience that impacted over 150,000 participants.  Currently, she is working on an anti-bullying initiative with the National Guard, Helping Everyone Achieve Respect, which has reached over 600,000 high school students in the US. She serves on the Advisory Council for CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) of Southern Connecticut and chairs UNL’s Chancellor’s Commission on the Prevention of Sexual Misconduct.

Dr. Swearer is a supervising psychologist in the Child and Adolescent Therapy Clinic at UNL and for seven years was the Director of the Nebraska Internship Consortium in Professional Psychology, an APA-approved internship program that trains 40+ interns annually. Her career has been devoted to the intersection of research and practice and training the next generation of child and adolescent psychologists. Dr. Swearer can be followed on Twitter: @DrSueSwearer; @Bully_Research; and @Empowerment_UNL.

Courses Taught

• EDPS 995 – Doctoral Seminar (Nebraska Bullying Prevention and Intervention Lab)
• EDPS 869 – Developmental Psychopathology 

Areas of Expertise:

    Bullying and peer victimization in children, youth, and young adults
    Youth empowerment and youth engagement
    The comorbidity of psychological disorders in children and adolescents
    Developmental factors in psychopathology and cognitive-behavioral
     interventions with youth and their families