Carol M. Lewis, Ph.D.

Carol M. Lewis, Ph.D., is executive director of the Office of the Associate Dean for Research. She began working at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work (SHS) in 1994 and completed her Ph.D. in psychology from The University of Texas at Austin in 1995.  During her tenure at SHS she has obtained funding for a number of research and evaluation projects.  In 2022, she received the UT Austin campus-wide Outstanding Research Administrator Award.

Lewis’s research primarily focuses on interventions that facilitate planned families. She believes that helping young adults be intentional about when to have children is prevention on a large scale and has the potential to reduce poverty, child abuse, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, family violence, and more.

Lewis has been involved in research and program evaluation projects for the Office of Adolescent Health, a division of the U.S. Office of Populations Affairs.  One such project involved conducting a five-year assessment of an intensive case management program for low-income adolescent parents administered in collaboration with a medical clinic and three community-based social service agencies.  The results of this research were published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Lewis has also collaborated with Austin Public Health to evaluate peer-led implementation of evidence-based curricula in middle and high schools in Austin. There are some key advantages to having adolescents present information on reproductive health to their peers; Lewis and her partners investigate how to enhance these benefits.

Outside the university, Lewis serves on the Ethics Review Board for People’s Community Clinic.  She is also on the Board of Directors for the Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company.