Carolyn Gentle-Genitty

Carolyn Gentle-Genitty is an American academic, writer and youth development consultant. A professor of social work, teaching both theory and practice at the Bachelors and Masters level, in Indianapolis, where she was appointed as the inaugural dean of Founder's College at Butler University. She is the oldest of five children. Her parents ran a food cart and canteen. Her father pedaled a bycicle cart to afford the weekly tuition payments, in spite of the financial hardships they faced. After completing her degree, she was hired by Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) as a faculty member and led the School of Social Work's undergraduate degree programs. In this role, Gentle-Genitty was responsible for over 25 initiatives, including the assessment of feeder schools, credit decision making, and providing policy guidance documents for standard operating processes. The following year, she was accepted into the 2023 cohort of American Council on Education Fellows program. In April 2023, she was promoted to full professor at Indiana University.

She ended term as the Chief Education Officer, Lead Consultant, and Founder at Pivot Attendance Solutions. She is the CEO and Founder of Attendance USA at attendanceusa.org.

In April 2024, Butler University announced Gentle-Genitty as the inaugural dean of their new two year Founder's College. She joined the college on June 3, 2024. In her first year, she was tasked to develop the school's infrastructure while hiring faculty and staff.

Research and public scholarship Gentle-Genitty's research explores the school attendance and truancy. In a 2008 study, she found that middle school students in Indiana missed school because the parents expected the schools to address absenteeism while the schools expected the parents to address the issue. Her approach to research often includes engagement with community partners and educators to identify and test solutions to issues. For example, in 2014 she worked with a school social worker to develop an international award-winning program to help educators foster positive student behaviors. Similarly, her work with the Warren Township schools to used community-based research methods to improve student success. For this research, Gentle-Genitty received The Charles R. Bantz Chancellor's Community Scholar Award in 2017.

Gentle-Genitty's research takes a holistic approach to understanding and addressing student attendance and behavior issues. After the Indianapolis prosecutor proposed adult-court for the parents of truant students, she observed that a singular focus on parents would be unlikely to improve attendance. Similarly, when the Indiana state legislature explored approaches to further enforce school attendance, Gentle-Genitty encouraged lawmakers to consider the range of reasons that a student might be absent from school, including "school withdrawal" (such as for appointments) and "school refusal" (for bullying and mental health issues). Following revisions to the proposed legislation, Gentle-Genitty reiterated support for approaches that support accountability while not emphasizing punitive measures and criminalization.

Her research of truancy led her development of the Perception of School Social Bonding instrument (PSSB). It is the first assessment of its kind that measures any gaps in school social bonding that may impact truancy. In addition to her research, she served as the president and editor for International Association for Truancy and Dropout Prevention (IATDP).

Selected publications

Gentle-Genitty, C. S., Gregory, V., Pfahler, C., Thomas, M., Lewis, L., Campbell, K., Ballard, K., Compton, K., & Daley, J. G. (2007). A Critical Review of Theory in Social Work Journals: A Replication Study. Advances in Social Work, 8(1). DOI: 10.18060/132 Gentle-Genitty, C. (2009). Best Practice Program for Low-Income African American Students Transitioning from Middle to High School. Children & Schools, 31(2), 109–117. DOI: 10.1093/cs/31.2.109 Gentle-Genitty, C., Haiping Chen, Karikari, I., & Barnett, C. (2014). Social Work Theory and Application to Practice: The Students’ Perspectives. Journal of Higher Education Theory & Practice, 14(1), 36–47. Gentle-Genitty, C., Karikari, I., Chen, H., & Wilka, E. (2016). Truancy: A look at definitions in the USA and other territories. In K. Reid (Ed.), Managing and Improving School Attendance and Behaviour. Routledge. Gentle-Genitty, C., Kim, J., Yi, E.-H., Slater, D., Reynolds, B., & Bragg, N. (2017). Comprehensive assessment of youth violence in five Caribbean countries: Gender and age differences. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 27(7), 745–759. DOI: 10.1080/10911359.2016.1273811 Gentle-Genitty, C., Renguette, C., eds. (2018). Gender Violence: Prevalence, Implications, and Global Perspectives. Nova Science Publishers. Kim, J., & Gentle-Genitty, C. (2020). Transformative school–community collaboration as a positive school climate to prevent school absenteeism. Journal of Community Psychology, 48(8), 2678–2691. DOI: 10.1002/jcop.22444 Gentle-Genitty, C., Merrit, B., & Kimble-Hill, A. C. (2021). A Model for Crafting Diversity, Inclusion, Respect, and Equity (DIRE) Policy Statements Toward Catalyzing Organizational Change. ACS Central Science, 7(3), 383–391. DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.0c01533 Gentle-Genitty, C. (2023). Teaching testable explanations and putting them into practice. In M. Arnold (Ed.), Handbook of Applied Teaching and Learning in Social Work Management Education: Theories, Methods, and Practices in Higher Education (pp. 207–218). Springer Nature.