A professor from the University of Windsor is now the Canada Research Chair on sexual violence.
Charlene Senn — who spoke with AM800's Patty Handysides on The Afternoon News — has devoted her professional life to educating women to better protect themselves. The new designation will allow Senn greater resources moving forward.
Senn developed a sexual assault resistance program for women in their first year of university when their most at risk and she'll continue to create more.
"Developing effective programs and seeing how we can maximize the effectiveness of programs once they're implemented, adapting programs for other populations," she says. "That's a big part of the work that I'm going to be doing."
Senn says her current focus is on the most common forms of sexual violence.
"Acquaintance sexual assault and sexual coercion including intimate partners, dating, cohabiting, and all of those kinds of relationships," says Senn. "As well as the acquaintances you don't know quite as well like the boyfriend of a friend or a classmate."
Taking that research and using it to change campus culture is imperative, she added.
"Try to figure how best to institutionalize bystander type programs so that we can actually make sure that we support survivors and we also intervene when we see problematic behaviour," she says.
Senn teaches courses on the psychology of women, male violence against women, and applied social psychology. She hopes to one day eliminate sexual violence from society.
— with files from AM800's Patty Handysides.