Courses
The Department of Criminal Justice offers a strong core of required courses, enhanced by an eclectic selection of electives designed to meet the interests and needs of our students. Each course is taught by a qualified faculty member who has direct experience in the particular subject matter.
Criminal justice is very interdisciplinary in nature. Students interested in criminal justice may be interested in careers such as law enforcement and investigation, criminal prosecution or defense, probation and parole, juvenile treatment, corrections victims' advocacy, crime mapping, research, and more. The program is designed to offer flexibility so that the student can tailor course selection to professional career goals. In this regard, students work closely with advisors to select courses each semester.
Course material is constantly updated to incorporate the ever-changing base of knowledge in this quickly evolving field. We offer such diverse electives as: Victimology, Crime Mapping, White Collar Crime, Terrorism, Environmental Crime, Organized Crime, Criminal Investigations, Interviewing and Assessing the Offender, Animal Cruelty, Evidence and Advocacy, Contemporary Legal Issues, and Justice Studies. We also offer a content-flexible Topical Seminar course to address the most current issues in the discipline. Such topics have included: Psychology of Arson and Sex Offenders, Homeland Security, Environmental Crime, Death Penalty, and Sex, Drugs, and the Bill of Rights.
The department is constantly reviewing its curriculum to ensure that it includes the very latest data and information. It is an exciting and rapidly changing field, and that vitality is reflected in the program.
Students who graduate with a B.S. degree in Criminal Justice should be able to:
- communicate intelligently and authoritatively the concepts of criminal justice;
- demonstrate research skills that reflect the ability to access information in a variety of ways, and the ability to discern authoritative sources of information from unreliable sources of information;
- demonstrate an awareness of ethical issues in the discipline and exhibit skills reflective of sound ethical and moral judgements;
- demonstrate confidence, maturity, and practical skills gained from practical experience in a criminal justice setting;
- demonstrate elevated oral and written communication skills;
- demonstrate elevated critical-thinking skills when addressing the complex issues raised in the multiple subdisciplines of criminal justice.