Roxana Toma

Roxana Toma (Ph.D., North Carolina State University) is Associate Professor and Chair of Graduate Liberal Arts and Sciences Programs.  Dr. Toma has a B.Sc. in Economics, a Ph.D. in Public Administration, and takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine how people form attitudes, values, and a sense of belonging that lead to behaviors that affect communities.  Her doctoral research on corruption earned her the Graduate School Dissertation Award at North Carolina State University (2009) and she is recipient of the prestigious Susan H. Turben Award for Excellence in Scholarship at SUNY Empire (2015).  Dr. Toma is a fierce believer in the importance of a policy degree.  She has published in multiple venues such as Public Seminar, Sociology Compass, Military Psychology, The International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science, just to name a few.  She is also co-editor/co-author of Confronting Corruption in Business: Trusted Leadership, Civic Engagement (Routledge, 2016).  Her work continues to focus on social capital and community building, and more recently she started examining student attitudes and values as they relate to confidence, resilience, and engagement in the learning process.  Dr. Toma is an advocate for collaborating with students on research.  In her free time, she likes to travel, walk by the ocean, and volunteer.  You can read this quick interview to find out more.