Criminal Justice Concentration

1. Criminal JusticeConcentration Pre-Advising PowerPoint

2. Careers in Criminal Justice • Welcome to the Criminal Justice concentration at Towson University. • We are often asked what kinds of jobs are there for students who study in criminal justice. • The majority of our students seek employment opportunities within criminal justice, either in the police, courts, or corrections systems. A number of our students are specifically interested in law enforcement at the local, state or federal level. • Recent graduates are working for the Secret Service, Capitol Police, Department of Defense, Maryland State Police, as well as the Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Harford County, and Montgomery County Police or Sheriffs offices. • Other graduates go on to law school and the study of criminal law, graduate school in criminal justice or social work, seek wide ranging careers in the social services, for example in the area of victim advocacy or juvenile justice, or they enter into work in the expansive private security field.

3. Crime and Justice in Focus • In our criminal justice concentration, we place the issues associated with crime and justice into the larger focus of the liberal arts. • We introduce students to the areas of social control or the response of the state and the public to crime, criminology or the nature and causes of crime, and various courses of special interest. We also require strong preparation in both research methods and theories of crime and criminality. • With the assistance of a departmental major advisor, as a criminal justice student, you can select from many courses and tailor your course choices to reflect your specific career goals and interests. In addition to criminal justice content courses, students complete other elective courses in a variety of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, and psychology, among others, emphasizing the strong inter-disciplinary nature of criminal justice today.

4. Criminal Justice Facultyand Courses • Completion of the criminal justice concentration requires 42-44 units of study or 14 courses. • Currently our full-time faculty offer numerous substantive courses in criminal law, ethics, social deviance, crime and inequality, institutional and community corrections, delinquency, serious offenders, and various courses addressing different forms of violence in American society. • Our part-time faculty are often practitioners in the criminal justice field who offer their experiences as part of the learning environment, and teach courses such as delinquency and juvenile justice, criminal investigation, police administration, and related.

5. External Learning • The criminal justice faculty are committed to student participation in the community. We encourage engagement through internships and service learning courses. Additionally, several of our students have taken the opportunity to study criminal justice in other countries through the Study Abroad program. • Often during the winter Minimester, one or two of our faculty lead a study abroad experience and teach a course in London for credit, called Crime and Punishment Cross Nationally. • Our criminal justice concentration has an internship coordinator to assist students with planning and arranging internships. Your department advisor can tell you who to contact. • Our students have the option of choosing an internship from one of our established sites or may propose and arrange their own site with the approval of the internship coordinator. You must be a junior in good standing to participate in an internship.

6. Strategy for Success • In addition to talking with your advisor about course selection, it is important to develop a strategy for successful employment once you have graduated. Your advisor can answer many of your questions, but it is also helpful to make use of the resources available on campus. • The Career Center on campus is available to provide you with many different aspects of career selection. Visiting the Career Center by the beginning of your junior year is recommended. • On that note, as this is the Criminal Justice Concentration, it is important for each student to realize that a career in the field has strict selection criteria. Use of “controlled dangerous substances,” prior arrest or conviction, alcohol abuse, or even bad credit may prevent you from qualifying for many security clearances.

7. Criminal Justice Student Knowledge Survey • As part of our curriculum assessment process in criminal justice, during your final semester of study prior to graduation, you will be asked to participate in an online “Criminal Justice Student Knowledge Survey.” • All students studying in the criminal justice concentration must complete the survey to be cleared for graduation. The assessment process enables us to evaluate what students are taking away from the major and how to improve our curriculum. Input from our students is important. There is no minimum score required for graduation, rather simply your participation.

8. And finally… • In concluding your visit to this website today, we would like you to complete a short survey about your interests related to criminal justice. • This survey should be answered, printed, and brought along with a copy of your unofficial transcript to your first meeting with your major advisor. • If you are transferring credits to Towson, please bring your transfer evaluation form. • If there are courses that you believe will satisfy our requirements to complete the concentration, it would be helpful if you have a syllabus and/or course description from the course.