Mary P. Koss is an American Regents' Professor at the University of Arizona, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health in Tucson, Arizona. Her best known works have been in the areas of gender-based violence and restorative justice. In 1987, Koss, along with her colleagues, Christine Gidycz and Nadine Wisniewski, published the first national study on rape. The study included the first presentation of the "one in four" statistic that created awareness of the extent of rape among college students, the development of a method for measuring rape, and coining terms such as "date rape" and "acquaintance rape".
Koss joined the faculty of St. Olaf College as an assistant professor in August 1973. She then transferred to a research university, Kent State in 1976. During her time there, Mary Harvey, of Victims of Violence Center and National Institute of Mental Health, recruited her to lead a study on rape prevalence in collaboration with the Ms. Foundation for Research and Education. The project was federally funded through a competitive grants award process. Koss' work resulted in the 1987 publication, "The Scope of Rape: Incidence and Prevalence of Sexual Aggression and Victimization in a National Sample of Higher Education Students." This was the first national, large-scale survey on rape of its kind. As a result of this and other works, Koss has been credited with coining the terms "date rape", "hidden rape", "unacknowledged rape", "acquaintance rape", and "campus rape". She also published "The Hidden Rape Victim: Personality, Attitudinal and Situational Characteristics." In that paper, she defined the hidden rape victim as, "one who has never reported her experience to a rape crisis center or to police." Koss defined the unacknowledged rape victims as women who have experienced the behaviors that define rape but do not realize that their experience constitutes rape or chose not to view it that way. This is now a well-accepted finding reaffirmed by other investigators in national surveys repeated in the early 2000s and most recently reported in 2012. Koss has served as an invited speaker and guest lecturer around the world. In 1991, she testified as an expert witness at the U.S. Senate hearings that led to the first passage of Violence Against Women Act. Koss was offered a faculty position in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Arizona in 1987 and later transferred to the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. Koss has been at the University of Arizona for 27 years, earning tenure in 1988 and designation Regents' Professor in November 2006. In her academic career, Koss has published close to 300 works on violence against women, including 145 peer-reviewed scientific articles as well as books, book chapters, and briefs. In addition to the Ms. Study, Koss has led 10 other federally funded research projects.
At the University of Arizona, Koss pioneered a restorative justice program, RESTORE. RESTORE is a voluntary conferencing program for adult misdemeanor and felony sexual assault perpetrators who are referred by a prosecutor. "The RESTORE Program for Restorative Justice for Sex Crimes: Vision, Process and Outcomes" is published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. "The paper is the first peer-reviewed quantitative evaluation of RJ conferencing for adult sexual assault." Koss and her colleagues from The University of Michigan and Carleton College also collaborated on the article titled, "Campus Sexual Misconduct: Restorative Justice Approaches to Enhance Compliance with Title IX Guidance." This article is published in Trauma, Violence and Abuse: A Review Journal.
Honors and awards
Koss has received over 20 awards and over 70 recognitions throughout her career. Along with her honors and awards, she has been a distinguished member of professional organizations such as the American Psychological Association.
Stephen Schafer Award, National Organization for Victim Assistance
Distinguished Contribution to Women's Health, American Psychological Association, Committee on Women in Psychology
