Thomas Segar
Indiana University of Pennsylvania Vice President for Student Affairs Thomas C. Segar was an invited presenter for a national conference sponsored by the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Criminal Justice Collective Chairs’ Workshop.
In addition to Segar’s presentation, this national, week-long event, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, featured two IUP Distinguished Alumni Award recipients.
Segar was invited as a conference presenter by IUP Distinguished Alumni Award recipient Everette Burdette Penn, executive director of the HBCU Criminal Justice Collective. Penn, a member of the faculty at the University of Houston, Clear Lake, earned his PhD in criminology from IUP in 2000 and was honored with IUP’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2025.
The conference also featured Shaun Gabbidon, who earned a PhD in criminology from IUP in 1996 and the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2021. Gabbidon is a Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice at Penn State Harrisburg and was the 2024 Beto Chair Scholar in Residence at the Sam Housing State University College of Criminal Justice.
Segar’s presentation, “Recruiting and Retaining Students in Today’s Complex Environment,” discussed key points related to student retention and persistence on a national level. He also spoke about IUP’s ongoing focus on student success, including IUP’s Crimson Scholars Circle, a program he developed and launched in fall 2021. The Crimson Scholars Circle is a specialized cohort program providing undergraduate students with four years of comprehensive financial, social, and academic support to thrive at IUP, designed to reduce retention and persistence gaps.
Segar began his work at IUP in June 2019. In 2022, he was named as one of only 26 inaugural Aspen Index Senior Impact Fellows, all experienced leaders in higher education, who are committed to coming together to advance the future of youth leadership development.
As a doctoral fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park, Segar was part of the first research team to work on the multi-institutional study of leadership, which informs the Aspen Index.
In addition to his establishment of the Crimson Scholars Circle, he has supported or initiated the Guides mentoring program, the annual Lead@IUP Student Leadership Summit, the development of the Folger Student Center, and increased programming within the Center for Multicultural Student Leadership and Engagement.
For more than two decades, Segar served as an independent consultant on topics of administrative and student leadership, multiculturalism, diversity, and social justice, assisting more than 60 higher education institutions, high schools, and organizations throughout the United States to implement diversity, student or administrative leadership, community building, and social justice workshops or program reviews or multi-day training experiences.
He has delivered more than 50 national and regional referred presentations and has been an invited keynote presenter or invited presenter to more than 70 conferences and higher education institutions throughout the United States. Most recently, Segar and Mimi Benjamin, professor in IUP’s Student Affairs in Higher Education program, presented “IUP’s Crimson Scholars Circle: A Student Affairs/Faculty Partnership for Continued Improvement” at the 2025 National Association of Student Personnel Administrators conference.
In March, Segar was named as a “20 People to Know in Higher Education” by the Pittsburgh Business Times.
He came to IUP from his work as vice president for student affairs at Shepherd University. Prior to his work there, Segar worked at Gettysburg College, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Maryland, College Park.
Segar earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology with a certificate in African American Studies from the University of Maryland College Park, his master’s degree in counseling with a specialization in college student personnel from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, and his doctorate in college student personnel administration with a concentration on teaching and social justice in higher education from the University of Maryland College Park.
About Everette Burdette Penn
In addition to his work with the HBCU Criminal Justice Collective, Penn is the cofounder and executive director of the Teen and Police Service Academy Center, a 501(c)(3) international organization for programming, researching, teaching, and training to reduce the social distance between youth and law enforcement.
Penn is the president of Penn PALS (Prepares, Advises, Leads, and Serves), which provides educational services to for-profit, nonprofit, and governmental agencies and companies in the areas of leadership, diversity, criminal justice issues, and policy.
He is the Houston City Council-approved embedded criminologist for the Houston Police Department, reporting directly to the chief of police. In this role, he provides scientific evidence on daily policy issues to guide police decision-making and develops and implements citywide evidence-based initiatives to reduce violent crime. He has also been the lead trainer for the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Course for Houston’s police officers.
He has been a global mentor for Three Dot Dash, a global youth initiative of the We Are Family Foundation, a social entrepreneur incubator and accelerator designed to amplify the work of young people making an extraordinary impact.
He was a consultant, developer of curriculum, and lead trainer for the Department of Health, City of Houston, Violence Prevention Peacekeeper’s Movement, leading a program presented to more than 20,000 Texans to learn the Community Safety Education Act of Texas (proper actions for peace officers and citizens during a traffic stop).
He has successfully secured more than $8 million in grants, fellowships, and external funding for programs and initiatives. He has been published in many refereed journals, has completed more than 300 scholarly presentations at various academic conferences nationally and abroad, and has more than 80 media appearances locally, nationally, and internationally.
Prior to his work at the University of Houston, Clear Lake, he was an assistant professor and instructor of juvenile justice/criminal justice at Prairie View A&M University, where he also taught programs for high school students during the summer months. He was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. Penn was a Fulbright Professor of American Studies, Faculty of Law, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt, from February to June 2005.
A veteran of Operation Desert Storm, he was a member of the US Army Reserve, serving as captain and executive officer/battalion supply officer for the 10th battalion medical in Houston; as first lieutenant, battalion supply officer for the 2nd battalion, 35th field artillery in Carrolton, Texas; and as a first lieutenant and company commander for the 455th QM in Trenton, NJ.
During his studies at IUP, he was selected as a graduate assistant in the Department of Criminology and founded the minority mentorship program on campus. He earned his bachelor’s degree in political science at Rutgers University and his master’s degree in criminal justice at the University of Central Texas (now Texas A&M).
About Shaun Gabbidon
Gabbidon has been a fellow at Harvard University’s W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute and has taught at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Africana Studies. His more than 100 scholarly publications include more than 75 peer-reviewed articles and 13 books.
In 2024, he was one of only six faculty members selected by Penn State for the 2024 Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement, which recognizes scholarly or creative excellence represented by a single contribution or a series of contributions around a coherent theme.
Internationally known for his research and publications in the specialty area of race and justice, Gabbidon earned the Faculty Scholar Medal for Social and Behavioral Sciences. This is the first time a professor from a Commonwealth campus has been awarded a Faculty Scholar Medal.
His most recent books include the co-authored Shopping While Black: Consumer Racial Profiling in America, which won the 2022 Outstanding Book Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences; Criminological Perspectives on Race and Crime; W.E.B. Du Bois on Crime and Justice: Laying the Foundations of Sociological Criminology; the co-authored A Theory of African American Offending: Race, Racism, and Crime; the co-authored texts Race and Crime and Race, Ethnicity, Crime and Justice: An International Dilemma; and the co-edited book Building a Black Criminology: Race, Theory, and Crime.
In 2020, he was named one of the most influential criminologists of the last decade by Academic Influence. A 2023 update by Academic Influence found Gabbidon ranked in the top 25 most influential criminologists. He is one of fewer than 10 criminologists to be named fellows of both the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
Gabbidon was named a fellow of the American Society of Criminology in recognition of his outstanding contributions to enhancing intellectual diversity in the field of criminology. He was also named a fellow of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in 2019. In addition, he received the 2015 Julius Debro Award for outstanding service and the 2016 Outstanding Teaching Award, both from the American Society of Criminology’s Division on People of Color and Crime.
Gabbidon is a member of the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. He is also the founding editor of Race and Justice: An International Journal.
In addition to his doctoral degree from IUP, he earned a master’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Baltimore and a bachelor of science degree in government administration with a specialty in criminal justice from Christopher Newport University.