Melanie D. Hetzel-Riggin, Ph.D., L.P., is a Professor of Psychology at Penn State Behrend. She is a licensed psychologist, Director of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and serves as a faculty research affiliate at the Susan Hirt Hagen Center for Community Outreach, Research, and Evaluation (CORE) and the Public Policy Initiative (PPI). Dr. Hetzel-Riggin’s research focuses on the effectiveness of prevention education to reduce interpersonal violence, community-level prevention, coordinated community and system responses, trauma risk and resiliency, and trauma-informed care. She also has expertise in mixed-method research and participatory, community-engaged research paradigms.

Her teaching interests include introductory psychology, personality and adjustment, abnormal psychology, clinical psychology, career counseling, trauma and crisis, and ethics and multiculturalism.