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Columbus State University selects Yarber-Allen to serve as Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Sociology

Columbus State University has selected Annice Yarber-Allen, Ph.D., to serve as Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Sociology and will hold the rank of Professor with tenure. She will bring more than three decades of higher education and professional clinical experience to this academic leadership role.

Since 2016, Dr. Yarber-Allen has been the Chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Geography at Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM) in Alabama. She joined the university in 2004, after serving three years as an adjunct instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. At AUM, Dr. Yarber-Allen has excelled in teaching and research.

In 2014, she was nominated for the U.S. Professor of the Year Award, sponsored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Additionally, Dr. Yarber-Allen was a 2014 recipient of the Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad Award to implement the Summer Institute on the Welfare of Women of Belize project. AUM recognized her accomplishments in teaching by presenting her the Distinguished Teaching Professorship Award, 2012 – 2015.

Prior to her career in higher education, she served in leadership roles in several areas of social work, including HIV prevention, substance abuse treatment, health care for the homeless, and alcohol and drug education and prevention.

Dr. Yarber-Allen received her Bachelor of Science degree in Social Work at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1981 and her Master of Social Work degree in Program Planning and Administration, summa cum laude, at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1999. She returned to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she earned her Ph.D. degree in Medical Sociology in 2004.

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