Nicole Shoenberger is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. She earned her Ph.D. at Bowling Green State University in Sociology with a core focus on Criminology and minors in Quantitative Methods and Family. Her research interests include criminal desistance, social inequalities within the criminal justice system, incarceration/institutionalization, the life course perspective, delinquency, deviance, and the family. Currently she is examining the effects of life course factors such as marriage and employment on criminal desistance with specific attention to how this process is affected by race, social class, and age. She is currently teaching sociology and criminology classes.