The Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention research is administratively located within the Department of Psychology and College of Natural Science at Colorado State University. The Center has a 30-year history of broad-based, multidisciplinary and multifaceted research efforts aimed at understanding community dynamics and the social, psychological and cultural factors that contribute to social problems such as substance use, delinquency, dropout, intimate partner violence, HIV/AIDS, anger and anger management, school violence, avoidable injuries, car crashes and environmental and other social problems.

The Center has been designated a Center of Excellence by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education and has been chosen as a Program of Research and Scholarly Excellence at Colorado State University for the past 10 years. Center faculty comprise a multidisciplinary team engaged in research aimed at understanding the underlying causes of social problems and in utilizing these findings to develop and test prevention programs at the community and individual level.

Currently major funding is provided by The National Institute on Drug Abuse and The National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse.