Sara Z. Evans – Kennesaw State University

The judging committee was impressed by how Dr. Evans applies high-impact practices (HIPs) and scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) to fuse teaching, research, and service into transformative experiences for students and colleagues. Recognizing the innate connection between criminal justice/criminology and everyday social life, she is dedicated to sparking curiosity about society from a scientific perspective and helping students recognize patterns through systematic analysis.

Dr. Evans’ teaching harnesses her students’ enthusiasm for familiar topics and channels that energy toward evidence-based analysis. She has developed HIPs embedded in courses and as standalone projects, using scaffolding, reflection, and feedback to build transferable skills. She utilizes diverse pedagogies—lecture, small groups, discussions, and applied activities—to push students to apply concepts to real-life situations rather than memorizing rote facts and data. For example, in her Policing course, Dr. Evans has students locate a practitioner, design interview questions for them, and integrate that interview with peer-reviewed research and course content for their final project.

Dr. Evans’ work in HIPs began with designing course-embedded undergraduate research projects (CUREs) that scale across levels and modalities. In a co-taught course, her students learned about fear of crime and how to conduct research. They administered surveys in campgrounds and parks and then used those data to complete semester-long projects. Students reported academic benefits (clearer understanding of texts) and personal growth (confidence and agency). Dr. Evans is currently developing an innovative research methods course that uses immersive learning to make abstract concepts tangible. Through interactive activities and an immersive case study, students practice the steps of research and apply independently. This approach bridges theory and practice, builds conference in research skills, and offers and replicable model for teaching challenging content in criminology and beyond.

Her SoTL publications distill these innovations for others. Dr. Evans has outlined how to embed research across the curriculum through scaffolded projects, offered practical strategies for data collection in undergraduate research, and contributed to scholarship on resilient pedagogy that emerged from the COVID-19 era. She has facilitated workshops at Kennesaw State University, Georgia Highlands College, Auburn, and national venues, helping colleagues build HIPs efficiently with limited resources. Dr. Evans’ recent publication “From Cool Idea to Evidence-Based Pedagogy” includes a toolkit designed to support faculty in developing, implementing, assessing, and disseminating their HIPs, ensuring that future innovators have practical resources to advance criminal justice education.

Sara Z. Evans, Ph.D. is an associate professor and the Master of Science in Criminal Justice program director at Kennesaw State University, where she teaches courses in research methods, criminology, juvenile justice, policing in America, race, gender, ethnicity, and crime, and more. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Georgia, an M.A. in sociology from Georgia Southern University, and a B.A. in sociology from Emory University. Her research has appeared in publications such as Internal Review of Victimology, Social Science Quarterly, Crime and Delinquency, Journal of Urban Design, and Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society, among others.