Dr. Beaulaurier holds a tenured faculty appointment as an Associate Professor in the College's School of Social Work. Dr. Beaulaurier maintains an active research portfolio. He is particularly interested in issues related to older adults, HIV and other sexually transmitted deseases, and domestic violence. His research has generally involved understudied, minority populations. Recently he has been conducting research on an approach to strengthening the operations of Haitian non-profit organizations in Miami in the wake of the Haitian disasters.
Dr. Beaulaurier is a Research Associate at FIU’s Institute for Ethnicity and Immigration, and with the FIU Center for Research on U.S. latino HIV/AIDS and Drug Abuse, and was a Hartford Faculty Scholar. He has taught doctoral, master and undergraduate courses on community social work practice, social services administration, social policy and research. His methodological expertise is primarily in the area of qualitative methods--grounded theory methods in particular. He is frequently called on to help design qualitative research methodologies, to train interviewers and focus group leaders in interviewing and group management techniques, particularly with special populations such as Spanish speakers, older people and people who have been diagnosed with severe mental illnesses. Since he converted a statistics lab from mainframe to PC computing as a doctoral student to the present, he has found ways of combining his interest in research with advances in computer technology. He has consulted, authored articles and conducted research on the use of computers in teaching, research and service delivery. Most recently he has been writing and consulting on the use of Qualitative Data Analysis software such as Atlas.ti, Wordstat and QDA Miner.
Before entering academe, Dr. Beaulaurier was the Director of the Los Angeles office of the National Council on the Aging, he also worked briefly as a community organizer, and has worked as a consultant with a variety of social service agencies on information technolgy, computerization and budget management issues.
email: beau@fiu.edu
website: beau.fiu.edu
Selected publications: beau.fiu.edu/writings