Expert Panel

Director, Center for Safe Schools
Lynn Cromley serves as the Director of the Center for Schools and Communities, a statewide training and technical assistance organization to support the improvement of educational and life outcomes for children and their families. She is also responsible for administration of the Center for Safe Schools, a statewide clearinghouse on school safety and youth violence prevention, recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as one of 19 state school safety centers in the nation.

Ms. Cromley has over 20 years of policy and program experience in the field of education, school safety and positive youth. She has served as a presenter at state and national conferences and training events on family support and school safety. She also currently and previously has served as a member or chair of various task force efforts and boards including, Pennsylvania Safe Schools Advisory Committee, PA Truancy Task Force, the Attorney General’s Task Force on School Violence, and chair of subcommittee, and Governor’s Partnership for Safe Children, among others.

Health Scientist, Division of Adolescent and School Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Since 2005, Marci has served as a Health Scientist in the Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In this role, she helps to determine priority research and application topics for adolescent and school-based injury and violence prevention, develops injury and violence prevention guidelines for school health programs and related updates and develops and disseminates injury and violence prevention research application tools for schools. In September 2006, on DASH’s behalf, Marci led the effort to partner with the Division of Violence Prevention at CDC to convene an expert panel on the topic of youth violence and electronic aggression. She later co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health on the topic of electronic aggression.

Marci began her career at CDC in 2003 as a Public Health Advisor in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. For five years prior, she served as the Associate Director for Violence Prevention Programs at the Harvard School of Public Health where she worked on a variety of projects including a youth violence prevention center and a distance satellite violence prevention training series reaching over 12,000 individuals. Marci began her career as an elementary school counselor in Washington, DC.

Founder, Olweus Bullying Prevention Program
For more than thirty-five years, Dr. Dan Olweus, research professor of psychology, affiliated with the Research Center for Health promotion (HEMIL) at the University of Bergen in Norway, has been involved in research and intervention work in the area of bullying problems among schoolchildren and youth. In 1970, he started a large-scale project that is now generally regarded as the first scientific study of bullying problems in the world, published as a book in Scandinavia in 1973 and in 1978 in the United States under the title Aggression in the Schools: Bullies and Whipping Boys.

In the 1980s, Dr. Olweus conducted the first systematic intervention study against bullying in the world, which documented a number of quite positive effects of what is now the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP). He was also the first to study the problem of bullying of students by teachers. Since 2001, he has been the leader of a government-initiated national initiative implementing OBPP on a large-scale basis in Norwegian elementary and junior high schools.

Dr. Olweus is generally recognized as a pioneer and founding father of research on bullying problems and as a world-leading expert in this area both by the research community and by society at large. His book, Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do, has been translated into fifteen different languages. Dr. Olweus has received a number of awards and recognitions for his research and intervention work, including the "Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy for Children" award by the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). He was named a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) in Stanford, California.

Director, Center for Youth Participation and Human Rights, Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life, Clemson University
Dr. Limber is co-author of the “Blueprints” Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, the Associate Director of the Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life and Associate Professor of Psychology at Clemson University. As a developmental psychologist, her research and writing has focused on the legal and psychological issues related to youth violence, child protection and children’s rights. She has directed the first wide-scaled implementation and evaluation of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program in the United States. In recent years, she has consulted with numerous schools around the country on the reduction of bullying among school children.

Prior to her work at Clemson University, Dr. Limber held positions as director of school-based services and assistant director of the Institute for Families in Society at the University of South Carolina. Between 1992 and 1994, she was the James Marshall Public Policy Fellow for the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, where she worked on a variety of issues related to child and family policy at the American Psychological Association (APA). In 2000, she was named Researcher of the Year by the South Carolina Professional Society on Abuse of Children. In 2004, she received APA’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest.

Director, Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Windber Research Institute and Windber Medical Center
Dr. Masiello is Director of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the Windber Research Institute and Windber Medical Center in Windber, Pennsylvania. During his years in Southwestern Pennsylvania, he has developed formal health promotion/disease prevention programs for rural, economically-depressed parts of the region—of which Bullying Prevention was a key area.

Dr. Masiello has lectured nationally and internationally on the topics of wellness, disease prevention, health promotion and has been recognized for his achievements in these areas.  He also serves as a (U.S.-based) Project Coordinator for the International HPH Network, World Health Organization-Collaborative Centre (WHO-CC), headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Director, Bullying Prevention Initiatives, Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Windber Research Institute
Diana Schroeder is Director of Bullying Prevention Initiatives for the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at Windber Research Institute in Windber, Pennsylvania. She is a pediatric clinical nurse specialist with a Master’s Degree in Nursing and is also a professor of nursing at the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown.

Ms. Schroeder became a certified Olweus bullying prevention trainer in 2001 and is working with school districts around the state to implement HALT! - A Bullying Prevention Program through a partnership with the Highmark Foundation. Additionally, she serves on the state’s advisory committees for bullying prevention and safe schools as well as a School Director for the Westmont Hilltop School District.

Secretary of Education, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Gerald L. Zahorchak, Ed.D., was nominated by Governor Edward G. Rendell to serve as Secretary of Education on October 5, 2005 and confirmed by the Senate of Pennsylvania on February 7, 2006. Prior to his nomination, Dr. Zahorchak served as Deputy Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education where he was responsible for the education of more than 1.8 million school children in the Commonwealth.

Dr. Zahorchak received his doctorate from The Pennsylvania State University, holds a master’s degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree from St. Francis University. Through the course of his career, he has led a vast array of national, state and local initiatives aimed at improving and expanding public education systems by focusing on economic development, building human capital and ensuring strong community involvement and endorsement. Dr. Zahorchak has worked with students at virtually every level of education as a superintendent, principal, teacher and football coach. He has also served in numerous civic roles in Johnstown, PA.

Dr. Zahorchak has received numerous awards and recognitions and is a highly regarded national educational leader and prominent member of the Council of Chief State School Officers.