Scotty Utz (M.A. UW '06) is the Research Associate for Princeton University's Princeton-Blairstown Center (PBC). After graduation, he moved east to serve as the Director of PBC's Blairstown Campus, a 275-acre outdoor education center that works primarily with underserved urban youth of the New York City/Philadelphia megalopolis. With his training at UW in research methodology and statistics alongside his work with the Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center (WYSAC), he quickly got pulled into the organization's evaluation efforts. In 2009, Scotty relinquished his responsibilities at the Blairstown Campus to focus on evaluating PBC's burgeoning in-school program that focused on teaching Social and Emotional Learning skills to students primarily in their urban context, rather than only working with them in the "wilderness." He continues to be interested in a broad range of efforts that strive to end social inequalities, particularly those aimed at reducing the achievement gap. His research on Social and Emotional Learning is helping PBC generate and evaluate experiential educational programming designed for regional groups of fiscally limited inner city young people.
