Rate My Professor Albert Farrell

Albert Farrell, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus in Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. He earned a B.S. in psychology from Michigan State University in 1975, an M.S. in psychological sciences from Purdue University in 1977, and a Ph.D. in psychological sciences from Purdue University in 1980, with a minor in quantitative methods. He completed his predoctoral clinical internship at Brown University Medical School before joining the VCU Psychology faculty in 1980. Farrell served as Commonwealth Professor from 2016 to 2023 and founded the Clark-Hill Institute for Positive Youth Development in 2005, one of five National Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He directed the institute until his retirement in 2023 after 43 years at VCU. His research focuses on identifying risk and protective factors related to youth violence, evaluating youth violence prevention programs, and research methodology, particularly longitudinal research and prevention science. Since 1992, he has collaborated with community agencies on evidence-based programs for early adolescents, conducting studies on factors promoting nonviolent responses among urban adolescents. This interdisciplinary work received funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Education, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and National Institute of Justice.

Farrell has received major awards including the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia in 2015, Virginia's highest faculty honor; Distinguished Mentoring Award and Distinguished Career Professor designation from VCU's College of Humanities and Sciences in 2023; University Award of Excellence from VCU in 2013; Nan Tobler Award for Review of the Prevention Science Literature from the Society for Prevention Research in 2012; and Distinguished Scholar Award from VCU's College of Humanities and Sciences in 2003. Key publications include 'The ecological effects of universal and selective violence prevention programs for middle school students: A randomized trial' (2009, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology), 'Evaluation of the Olweus Bully Prevention Program in an urban school system in the USA' (2018, Prevention Science), 'Bidirectional relations between witnessing violence, victimization, life events, and physical aggression among adolescents in urban schools' (2020, Journal of Youth and Adolescence), and 'Challenges to advancing the development of effective school-based violence prevention programs' (2024, Psychology of Violence). His model for youth violence prevention is considered the gold standard by psychologists, and he continues mentoring and collaborating on related projects post-retirement.