George W. Dowdall

George W. Dowdall, Ph.D., is a distinguished sociologist and expert in public health and higher education with a notable academic and policy-focused career. He is currently an Adjunct Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Public Health Initiatives and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. With an academic foundation rooted in sociology, Dr. Dowdall earned his Ph.D. from Brown University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA’s School of Public Health, supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Dr. Dowdall’s research, teaching, and public policy engagement center around college drinking, mental health, campus safety, and research methodology. He is the author of the influential book College Drinking: Reframing a Social Problem / Changing the Culture, which has been widely used in both academic and administrative efforts to address alcohol use on college campuses. His scholarship has appeared in prominent journals across sociology, medicine, and public health. Notably, his research on intoxicated rape and college sexual violence contributed critical data drawn from one of the largest representative samples of universities and women to date. His career includes faculty roles at institutions such as Indiana University, Buffalo State, and visiting appointments at prestigious universities including UCLA, Brown, Penn, and Harvard. At Saint Joseph’s University, he served as Chair of the Department of Sociology and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He has taught courses in sociology, criminal justice, public health, and statistics, offering interdisciplinary instruction across undergraduate and graduate programs. Dr. Dowdall’s public service includes significant roles in policy-making and advocacy. He was appointed by two Pennsylvania governors to serve on the Commonwealth’s Advisory Council on Drug and Alcohol Abuse from 2004 to 2013. He also served as a Congressional Fellow with the American Sociological Association, working in the office of then-Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr., where he contributed to policy development related to social issues. He is a longtime board member of the Clery Center for Security on Campus, an organization dedicated to campus safety and sexual assault prevention. His recent contributions include editing a special issue on college sexual violence in Behavioral Science, publishing encyclopedia entries, consulting for the Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy project at the University of Pennsylvania, and writing op-eds and essays addressing Title IX, college sexual assault, and the intersection of alcohol use and the COVID-19 pandemic. A sought-after speaker, Dr. Dowdall has presented his work at leading conferences in the U.S. and internationally, including the Eastern Sociological Society, European Sociological Association, and American Society of Criminology. His career demonstrates a deep commitment to applying sociological insights to improve public health, campus environments, and student well-being through evidence-based education, advocacy, and policy. George W. Dowdall is an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Public Health Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. He is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Saint Joseph’s University. His research and teaching interests include college drinking, mental health, and research methods. His books include College Drinking: Reframing a Social Problem / Changing the Culture (2013). In addition, he is author or coauthor of articles in journals in social science, medicine, and public health, among them a paper on college rape and intoxicated rape that used the largest representative sample of universities and women thus far. He has received several awards for teaching and research. A graduate of Regis High School and Holy Cross College, he received a Ph.D. in Sociology from Brown University and was an NIMH postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA School of Public Health. He has been a regular faculty member at Indiana University, Buffalo State, and Saint Joseph’s, and has held visiting appointments at UCLA, Penn, Brown, and Harvard. He was chair of SJU’s Department of Sociology and was associate dean of its College of Arts and Sciences. He was the American Sociological Association’s Congressional Fellow in the office of Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. He was appointed by Governors Rendell and Corbett to serve on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Advisory Council on Drug and Alcohol Abuse from 2004 to 2013. In 2015-16, he served as a consultant to the Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy project (Dennis Culhane and John Fantuzzo, Co-PI’s, University of Pennsylvania). He is a member of the board of the Clery Center for Security on Campus.