Dr. Kevin E. Courtright, a faculty member in PennWest’s Department of Criminal Justice, History, and Politics, was presented the 2024 Northeastern Association of Criminal Justice Sciences Regional Fellow Award during the NEACJS conference held June 5-7 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

The award is presented annually to an individual with a minimum of four years teaching experience in criminology/criminal justice who has made significant contributions to scholarship in criminal justice education as demonstrated through published works, scholarly papers, and accomplishment in teaching, grants, and other related professional activities.

Dr. Kevin Courtright accepts his NEACJS Regional Fellow Award.

While at the conference, Courtright presented “Systematic suspicion: Offender control and reformation as portrayed in Escape from Alcatraz and Straight Time,” a paper co-authored by PennWest faculty member Dr. Ihor Bemko. He also participated in two roundtables: “(Trying to) teach ethics successfully” and “Mergers and acquisitions: Dialog on lessons learned from CJ program mergers.”  

Courtright joined the Edinboro faculty in August 2001 after serving as assistant professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Niagara University – where he taught courses in juvenile justice, research methods, incarceration and private security.

Prior to earning his Ph.D. in criminology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1995, Courtright worked in the Chautauqua County Office of Probation in both Jamestown and Dunkirk from 1986 as an intern through 1995 as a probation officer.

Committed to creating out-of-classroom experiential learning opportunities for his students, Courtright was named the 2021 Edinboro Faculty Member of the Year for outstanding excellence in teaching. He was also selected to represent his faculty colleagues as the Ceremonial Mace Bearer during the fall 2021 commencement.

Courtright is the author of several articles that have appeared in national criminal justice publications. His byline has appeared in the Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, Federal Probation, the Criminologist and the Journal of Criminal Justice Education.

He served as principal investigator of a research project funded by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania that examined the economic impact and community satisfaction levels of selected state prisons located within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Along with collaborator David A. Mackey, he has developed two attitudinal scales – one measuring one’s propensity for punitiveness and the other measuring the rehabilitative ideal (one’s belief in the rehabilitation of offenders over punishment and retribution) and remains interested in studying and measuring the construct of empathy and its impact upon delinquent/criminal behavior.

Dr. Courtright is a member of the American Society of Criminology, the European Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. He was Edinboro’s 2007-2008 Researcher of the Year. He previously served on the Board of Directors for Harborcreek Youth Services.

In his spare time, he likes to enjoy the great outdoors, spend time with his family and woodwork.