Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Monique Sosnowski wins SCB’s Early Career Conservationist Award

This summer in Brisbane, Australia, Dr. Monique Sosnowski of Farmingdale State College’s Center for Criminal Justice Studies received the Society for Conservation Biology’s Early Career Conservationist Award, recognizing her leadership at the intersection of wildlife conservation, crime analysis, and justice.

Dr. Sosnowski’s work bridges criminology and conservation practice. She co-leads multi-partner projects on wildlife trafficking, develops crime-analysis tools for environmental enforcement, and mentors undergraduate researchers who contribute to real-world datasets—most notably a growing Federal Wildlife & Environmental Crimes Prosecution Database used for teaching, scholarship, and policy insight. Her collaborations span agencies and NGOs, and her classroom translates cutting-edge methods (GIS, data visualization, crime mapping) into hands-on learning for students preparing for careers in conservation, law enforcement, and policy.

“Conservation succeeds when data meets justice—when we can trace how, where, and why wildlife crimes occur, and then equip students and partners to act on that knowledge,” Dr. Sosnowski said following the award.

Dr. Sosnowski at the Koala Sanctuary near Brisbane, Australia meeting kangaroos and koalas

 

At FSC, she has launched new curriculum in environmental crime, expanded internship pipelines with local and regional partners, and guided student teams to produce publishable research and public-facing resources.

What’s next: Dr. Sosnowski and student collaborators are advancing open, standards-based datasets on wildlife crime and building tools that help practitioners target interventions more effectively – work that continues to elevate FSC’s role in evidence-driven conservation justice.

Interested students can get involved through CRJ research internships, the Environmental Crime course sequence, and faculty-mentored projects in GIS and crime analysis.