Faculty and Staff

Distinguished Professor and Director for the Institute for the Study of Behavioral Health and Addiction,  Dr. Doumas is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Psychologist in Idaho. She is a member of the American Counseling Association, the Association of Counselor Education and Supervision, and Research Society on Alcoholism. Her experience includes both individual and couples counseling for clients with substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and interpersonal concerns. She specializes in empirically based interventions and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Her research interests include substance abuse prevention and intervention, with a focus on harm reduction and online interventions for high-risk college and high school students, and bullying prevention for elementary, middle, and high school students, with a focus on bystander intervention.

Dr. Esp has worked at Boise State University since 2000.   She is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor and a Certified GAIN Trainer and GAIN Interviewer.  Dr. Esp’s research and teaching specialties lie in the discipline of addiction studies, prevention, and intervention. Publications and presentations related to her specialties involve chemical dependence and addiction in youth, implementing substance abuse prevention programs, behavioral health as a public health issue and the integration of mental health and substance abuse services.

Dr. Miller Licensed Professional Counselor and Associate Professor and Addiction Program Coordinator for the Department of Counselor Education.  Dr. Miller’s clinical background includes work in community agencies and private practice, primarily working with at-risk populations.  Dr. Miller specializes in applying principles of neurobiology within counseling to address a wide range of developmental and clinical concerns, including addiction, anxiety, trauma, and interpersonal distress.  In collaboration with a team of scholars from across the United States, she helped develop a treatment manual for neuroscience-informed cognitive behavioral therapy (nCBT) and provided a grant-funded training to clinicians in Idaho.  Dr. Miller’s research interests include developing and evaluating neuroscience-informed interventions within school and addiction treatment settings

Dr. Williams is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Idaho and Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Boise State University. He also serves as co-leader of the Methods Core in the University of Pennsylvania’s NIMH ALACRITY Center for the transformation of behavioral health services. His clinical experience includes individual and family counseling with children who experienced emotional and behavioral disorders and their families. Dr. Williams’ research focuses on strategies to improve the implementation of evidence-based practices in mental health service systems, the relationship between organizational culture and climate and service effectiveness, and statistical methods for modeling data in multilevel implementation trials.

Download Dr. Williams Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Dr. Mariane Bacelar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and the director of the Skill Acquisition and Psychophysiology (SAP) Lab. She joined Boise State University in 2022 after completing her Ph.D. in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Psychophysiology at Auburn University. Dr Bacelar’s research program is focused on understanding the factors that influence motor skill acquisition and physical (in)activity patterns and their underlying neural mechanisms. Her main goal is to generate reliable and reproducible data that can be used to inform impactful interventions and training sessions in applied settings. To address her research aims, Dr. Bacelar implements electroencephalography (EEG) to complement behavioral measures, statistical modeling techniques, and metascience approaches.

Dr. James Beauchemin is an Associate Professor in the Boise State University School of Social Work. He received his PhD from Ohio State University and MSW from the University of Vermont. His primary research agenda focuses on interventions to improve the mental health and wellness among adolescents and young adults. Dr. Beauchemin is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with extensive clinical practice experience in settings including community mental health, university counseling centers, school social work, and private practice. Current projects include the evaluation of a Solution-Focused Wellness prevention intervention model among incoming college students.

Dr. Aida Midgett is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Counselor Education at Boise State University. Born and raised in Brazil, she has been residing in the United States since 1991. Dr. Midgett obtained her doctoral degree in Educational Psychology/Counseling Psychology emphasis and her masters in Community Counseling from Northern Arizona University. Her professional background includes behavioral health and school-based research, training counselor education students, and evaluating service-learning projects related to multicultural training. Dr. Midgett has also worked as a clinician in university, agency, and in-patient mental health hospital settings. Currently her research focuses on evaluating a brief, bystander bullying intervention program in K-12 settings.

Dr. Peralta is a Professor in the Language, Literacy and Culture Department in the College of Education at Boise State University. Dr. Peralta’s career expands across several contexts. She was the Director of Migrant Head Start in Northern California and a bilingual public school teacher. At the university level, she served as a professor at California State University Monterey Bay, California State University Chico, and at Boise State University as professor and chair of the former Bilingual Department. Dr. Peralta has an exemplary record in local school district bilingual program development and university bilingual teacher preparation. She is a founder member of the first dual immersion program in the Treasure Valley, ID.  Dr. Peralta’s research focuses on bilingual education, education of teachers working with emergent bilinguals and parent-school relationships in rural schools settings.

Leah Kalk is the director of the Idaho RADAR Center as well as an adjunct faculty member in the Addiction Studies department within the School of Social Work.  She is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor who received her Master of Arts in Counseling from Boise State University.  Leah has worked in the mental health field in Idaho for over a decade.  Her clinical work in the community includes counseling clients of all ages, with specific focus on refugees, juvenile justice, and individuals in crisis, experiencing suicidal ideation, or engaging in problematic substance use.  Leah serves as a board member on the Idaho Conference on Alcohol and Drug Dependency Foundation.

Through her work as a Multimedia Resource Specialist, Melissa Rackley plays a key role in supporting the mission of the Idaho RADAR Center. Fueled by a passion for creativity and armed with a degree in Public Relations (BA), she has designed engaging drug and alcohol prevention materials for professionals in the substance use prevention and treatment fields throughout the State of Idaho.

She joined Boise State University in 2019 and her role has evolved over time to include the Assistant Director of the Idaho Conference on Alcohol and Drug Dependency. Melissa is currently attending Boise State University as a second-degree seeking student working toward a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design.