Kim M. Anderson is a Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Central Florida and a core faculty member of UCF’s interdisciplinary Violence Against Women Faculty Cluster. She is also a Faculty Fellow with the Center for Higher Education Innovation, where she conducts mixed-methods research on college student success, well-being, and resilience in the context of adverse life experiences.
Since joining UCF in 2015, Anderson has played a central role in advancing research-engaged education, trauma-informed pedagogy, and community-based scholarship. She has held key leadership roles supporting doctoral education and interdisciplinary research and is widely recognized for integrating community-engaged and participatory methods into both her scholarship and her teaching.
Anderson is an accomplished doctoral mentor and qualitative methodologist. She has chaired and served on numerous doctoral dissertations and has worked extensively with PhD, Master’s, and undergraduate students as research collaborators and co-authors. Since 2019, she has mentored more than 30 student researchers who have contributed to over 35 peer-reviewed publications, reports, and conference presentations.
Her work at UCF has been recognized with multiple honors, including the UCF Founders’ Day Champions of Student Success and Well-Being Award (2024), a UCF Teaching Incentive Program Award (2025), and appointment as a Fulbright Specialist Scholar (2025–2028).
Credentials
- Ph.D., Doctor of Philosophy
- MSSW, Master of Science in Social Work
- LCSW, Licensed Clinical Social Worker
Kim M. Anderson is a Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Central Florida and a core faculty member of UCF’s Violence Against Women Faculty Cluster. Her scholarship examines how gendered violence and trauma shape life trajectories and how educational and professional systems can be redesigned to promote resilience, justice, and sustainable helping professions. Her work bridges survivor-centered violence research with evidence-based innovations in social work and higher education.
Her research is organized around three interconnected themes. First, she studies violence against women across the life course, including childhood exposure to domestic violence, adult interpersonal violence, and the long-term effects of trauma on mental health, identity, and social and economic outcomes. This work is synthesized in her forthcoming Bloomsbury volume, Violence Against Women: Countering Historical and Contemporary Missteps on the Road to Social Justice, which advances an intersectional and survivor-centered framework for understanding violence as a structural social problem.
Second, Anderson examines how these same patterns of adversity appear among students in helping professions. Her scholarship of teaching and learning shows that social work students report disproportionately high levels of adverse childhood experiences, sexual violence, and secondary traumatic stress, with important implications for learning, retention, and professional development. As a Faculty Fellow with UCF’s Center for Higher Education Innovation, she co-leads a multi-year, longitudinal mixed-methods study of first-time-in-college and transfer students examining how adverse life events affect mental health, academic performance, persistence, and graduation. The findings inform institutional strategies to improve student well-being, retention, and degree completion.
Third, her work translates trauma research into trauma-informed and survivor-centered education. Using participatory and experiential research instruction and trauma-informed pedagogy, she creates learning environments that help students engage with difficult material, strengthen their research skills, and sustain their commitment to social justice. These approaches prepare future social workers to enter the field with both professional competence and emotional resilience.
Areas of Specialty
- Qualitative and mixed-methods research
- Experiential and participatory approaches to teaching research
- Trauma-informed pedagogy and professional education
- Adverse childhood experiences among social work students
- Adult interpersonal violence and mental health outcomes
- Childhood exposure to domestic violence and intergenerational trauma
- Violence against women and survivor-centered justice
Research Grants
A Research Study Evaluating the Impact of PJI Academy on K-12 Teachers
Research Identifies Student Pathways to Academic Success
Research underway by Center for Higher Education Innovation (CHEI) fellows is producing key insights into how to help students with adversity in their backgrounds find academic success. The Life Happens project is led by...
BSW Student Receives Alpha Eta Student Research Presentation Award
Mary Farley, a senior majoring in social work, received the Alpha Eta Student Research Presentation Award for her study “Access Barriers to Long-term Healthcare for Female Sexual Assault Survivors.” Farley...
Social Work Track Doctoral Candidate Khalilah Louis Caines Awarded FICW Fellowship
Khalilah Louis Caines, LCSW is earning her Ph.D. in Public Affairs within the social work track and has recently been awarded $5,000 for a 2022-2023 Dissertation Fellowship from the Florida...
BSW Student Mary Farley Receives Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship and Grant
Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) student, Mary Farley is a recipient of the 2022 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Program, Track 1 (SURF Fellow). Through this program, Farley will receive...
Recipients of the 2022 Seed Funding Program Announced
The program awarded a total of $1 million to 32 teams. This is the third year the program has been available to UCF faculty and researchers. UCF announced the recipients...
