William DeJong, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH), where he teaches courses in intervention planning, program evaluation, and health communications. Dr. DeJong was awarded the School's Norman A. Scotch Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2007. He also received the Harvard School of Public Health's Faculty Mentoring Award in 1999.
Dr. DeJong served as director of the U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse and Violence Prevention (HEC) from 1995-2004. Under his direction, the HEC emerged as the nation's primary training and technical assistance resource for helping institutions of higher education develop, implement, and evaluate programs and policies for alcohol and other drug prevention on campus. He also served as director of the Center for College Health and Safety (CCHS), based at Education Development Center, Inc., in Newton, MA, from 2000-2005. He continues to serve as a senior advisor to both centers. In recognition of this body of work, he was awarded the first College Leadership Award by the American Public Health Association's Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Section in 2000, and received the Outstanding Contribution to the Field Award from The Network Addressing Collegiate Alcohol and Other Drug Issues in 2008.
Presently, Dr. DeJong serves as the executive director of research and analysis at EverFi, Inc. (formerly Outside The Classroom, Inc., in Newton, MA. In this role, he oversees the development and revision of AlcoholEdu for College, an online alcohol education course that is taken annually by approximately one third of the nation's first-year college students. Related to the course, he is responsible for advising EverFi staff who develop and manage a survey database with over 400,000 college students added each year.
Dr. DeJong was also the principal investigator of the Social Norms Marketing Research Project (SNMRP), a five-year, $4 million study funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). SNMRP is a randomized trial to evaluate the impact of campus-based media campaigns that correct student misperceptions of campus drinking by communicating normative information about student alcohol consumption. He also served as a co-principal investigator for Common Ground, a NIAAA-funded projects based at the University of Rhode Island and led by Dr. Mark Wood.
Dr. DeJong has been called upon frequently as an advisor by colleges, universities, and other organizations concerned about college student substance use. Highlights include serving as a member of the Board of Directors of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (1993-1996) and as a member of MADD's Youth Commission (1995-1996) and Commission on Colleges (1999-2001), and serving as a member of the Panel on Prevention and Treatment of College Alcohol Problems, Subcommittee on College Drinking, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), Bethesda, MD (1998-2002). He contributed to the NIAAA's report, A Call to Action: Changing the Culture of Drinking at U.S. Colleges, which reviews the research literature on successful prevention strategies and provides best practices recommendations. His service on boards of directors and advisory boards includes terms with several additional organizations.
Dr. DeJong is the author of over 400 professional publications in the fields of alcohol and tobacco control, criminal justice, health communications, health promotion, and social psychology. Many of these publications focus on issues related to alcohol and other drug (AOD) problems among college students. Since 1989, he has participated in over 150 conferences and workshops as a keynote speaker, invited speaker, or discussant.
A graduate of Dartmouth College (1973), Dr. DeJong received his doctorate in social psychology from Stanford University (1977).
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