In the Classroom
The classroom should be an environment that cultivates curiosity and stimulates knowledge, challenges preconceived notions by engaging in healthy and productive debates, and encourages the use of relevant theory, research, policy, and experiences.
In the classroom I use a three-pronged approach to inspire and engage students, while enhancing their knowledge acquisition and apprehension. First, I create an empowering atmosphere so that my students feel comfortable expressing diverse stances on topics. Second, I cultivate a student-centric learning environment to ensure that student needs are anticipated and addressed. Third, I incorporate tangible lessons and experiential learning in order to provide practical and relevant skills to students.
As part of my approach to teaching, one of my three main focuses include creating an environment where students from all backgrounds feel comfortable voicing their thoughts on a given topic area. This also includes allowing for students to engage with diverse perspectives. While I attempt to include a diverse range of scholars in the readings my students are assigned, I understand there are no homogenous viewpoints in any single class, thus I make sure to not prescribe my point of view on the class. Rather, I guide students through a back and forth dialogue on race, ethnicity and criminal justice in order to engage students from their various standpoints and the literature.
Education and work are the levers to uplift a people.
–W.E.B. Du Bois
SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY
Criminological Theory – CCJ 5000
This course examines the role of criminological theory broadly and in the development of criminal justice policy. Theories examined include biological, psychological and social structural and cultural theories. The course includes a focus on the importance of theory for the allocation of resources, identification of promising strategies for prevention and intervention, justice program success, for criminological theory organizes the way scholars and practitioners observe and explain delinquent and criminal behavior. Theories of crime also help explain how and why the justice system should respond and set policy for addressing criminal behavior.
Institutional and Community Corrections – CCJ 2250
This course serves to introduce students to major contemporary issues in both institutional and community corrections in the United States. Topics covered include detention, sentencing, intermediate sanctions, adult institutions, probation, parole, and correctional staffing and personnel issues. The procedures, practices, and personnel involved are also examined. Students will learn about the wide array of effective punishments and treatment programs that constitute alternatives to incarceration, and which are designed to meet the level of risk posed by, and the need of, each individual. These include probation, parole, electronic monitoring, house arrest, day-treatment centers, boot camps, restitution, fines and more.
JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Introduction to Corrections – COR 101
Introductions to Corrections is intended as an introduction to the corrections system and provides an overview of current institutional practices, policies, and legal issues. The course focuses on the relation of corrections to the criminal justice system, theories underlying correctional practice and the role of institutions within the corrections system. The course reviews the historical development of crime and corrections, sentencing, jails, prisons, correctional policies, agencies, prison life, and challenges facing correctional populations. Additionally, the principles and practices of treatment afforded to offenders in various types of correctional settings are covered.
Juvenile Delinquency – SOC 309
Juvenile Delinquency focuses on the illegal conduct of youth whose cases are handled by the juvenile justice system. It examines the ways that adults have reacted to transgressive behavior by youth over the centuries, and how treatment approaches and prevention efforts by social welfare and social control agencies have changed. The course explores how the teenage offenders’ race, class, and gender might influence the social and legal response to their delinquent activities. Additionally, it evaluates the many sociological, psychological and biological theories that attempt to identify the root causes of gang-involvement, drug-use, stealing, vandalism (graffiti), status offenses (such as truancy), and other varieties of adolescent misbehavior.
Introduction to Major Problems in Criminal Justice I – CJBA110
Introduction to Major Problems in Criminal Justice I is the first semester of a year-long introductory sequence on major problems in criminal justice. The focus of the first semester is on the definition of crime and major crime strategies. The overarching aim of this course is to familiarize students with the sorts of questions researchers ask and how they go about answering them. Students will be asked to read original research and data, and to use these materials to construct hypotheses and original research questions.
Introduction to Major Problems in Criminal Justice II – CJBA111
Introduction to Major Problems in Criminal Justice II is the second semester of a year-long introductory sequence of major problems in criminal justice. The focus is on the operation of the legal system and major dilemmas in policing and corrections. The overarching aim of this course is to familiarize students with the sorts of questions researchers ask and how they go about answering them. Students will be asked to read original research and data, and to use these materials to construct hypotheses and original research questions.
Advanced Sociological Methodology – SOC 327
Advanced Sociology Methodology provides students with the skills necessary to independently develop sociological research proposals, creating them with the use of various methodological and analytical techniques.
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
Data Analysis in Criminal Justice – 47:202:302
Data Analysis in Criminal Justice is an examination of various types of data used within criminal justice and the fundamentals of statistical analyses. I provide an understanding of the appropriate use of data, the limitations of various methods, data collection techniques, how to interpret findings, and an overview of the policy implications behind data.
Criminal Justice Research Methods – 47:202:301
Criminal Justice Research Methods focuses on developing rudimentary tools needed for conducting research, and writing reports and scholarly papers in criminal justice.
Crime In Different Cultures – 47:202:344Q
Crime in Different Cultures explores crime as a pattern of social behavior, crime and punishment in other societies–especially non-Western societies that lack institutional systems of criminal justice, the social evolution of crime and crime-related institutions in U.S. history, and the people and organizations on both sides of the crime problem.
