Brian Wilcox was a professor of psychology and director of the Center for Children, Families, and the Law at UNL from 1994-2015. A community psychologist with an interest in social policy, Brian taught graduate courses on program evaluation and the social policy implications of research in child development. In these courses, he helped students understand the limitations of many evaluation studies on “hot” topics such as sexuality education and illuminated the gap between scientific findings on children’s development and the social policies that impact children and their families. Policy-related topics in his seminars included child maltreatment, child poverty, adolescent risk behavior, media effects, divorce, and marriage.
Brian’s research spanned child welfare policy evaluations, the measurement of child maltreatment, children’s media policy, early childhood policy evaluations, studies of adolescent sexual behavior in the U.S. and Brazil, studies of adolescent religiosity and sexual behavior, and HIV prevention studies with high risk populations (sex workers and their clients) in Brazil and Thailand. His international research is ongoing and includes an intervention study with clients of transgender sex workers; he is also writing papers with students related to the prevention of child maltreatment. But now he has time for walks, yoga, the gym, surfing, playing guitar, reading on the beach, visiting with friends and family, and travel. He is sorely missed by his friends and colleagues at UNL!
