Dr. Christine Norton, LCSW, Assistant Professor of Social Work at Texas State University-San Marcos, received her PhD in Social Work from Loyola University Chicago. She has a Master of Arts in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago and a Master of Science in Experiential Education from Minnesota State University-Mankato.

Christine has over 15 years experience working with adolescents in a variety of practice settings including therapeutic wilderness programs, juvenile justice, youth and family counseling, schools, and youth mentoring and educational empowerment programs. She has worked for Outward Bound Wilderness (OBW) as an instructor and a course director for Intercept, OBW's youth-at-risk program. She also worked as a clinical social worker with the Journey program, OMNI Youth Services' outdoor experiential therapy program.

Christine's areas of practice and research expertise are in innovative interventions that promote effective treatment in child and adolescent mental health, positive youth development, and youth empowerment, especially in the area of wilderness and adventure therapy. She is active in helping to establish best practices in adventure therapy and is the Therapeutic Adventure Professional Group's representative for the Association for Experiential Education's Mid-South Region, where she is Secretary of the Regional Council. She is also a member of the TAPG Leadership Council and is in charge of promoting external relations.

Christine is very interested in an interdisciplinary approach blending clinical social work, adventure and ecopsychology to promote ecological health and wellness. She serves as an Advisory Council member for the Great Plains Restoration Council's program "Restoration not Incarceration," providing consultation and evaluation, and has written on eco-social work for the journal Ecopsychology. For more information on the GPRC's Restoration not Incarceration program, go to: http://www.gprc.org/restorationnotincarceration.html

As a social work educator, Christine is active in promoting adventure-based group work in social work education and practice, and was voted the 2009 Mark Guidry Practitioner of the Year by the Mid-South Council of the Association for Experiential Education. She is also writes about reflective teaching, experiential learning and multiculturalism in social work education. She is also a member of the Council on Social Work Education, the Association for the Advancement of Social Work with Groups, and the National Association of Social Workers.

Christine has written about innovative interventions for youth in such noteworthy journals as the Clinical Social Work Journal, the Journal of Social Work Practice and the Journal of Therapeutic Schools and Programs. Christine recently published her edited book "Innovative Interventions in Child and Adolescent Mental Health" with Routledge, which provides a developmental and neurobiological rationale for utilizing interventions such as wilderness therapy, art therapy, music therapy, bibliotherapy, animal-assisted therapy and meditation with children and adolescents (http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415879859/).

Christine has been engaged in intervention research, program evaluation and positive youth development research, including a current project evaluating the impact of local wilderness experience programs on positive youth development in urban communities. She has lectured internationally on child and adolescent development and the need for positive developmental settings in both education and mental health, and her dissertation was recognized by the Illinois Child Welfare Journal and the National Symposium on Doctoral Research in Social Work by Ohio State University as an exemplary example of mixed-methods research (https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/handle/1811/36779).