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My name is Melinda Schlager.
I have a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas,
a master's degree in liberal studies from Northwestern in
Evanston, Illinois, a master's degree in criminal justice
from Rutgers University, and a Ph.D. in criminal justice from
Rutgers University.
Right now the program has approximately
150 students in it.
We have constables, we have sheriffs, folks from a variety
of different police departments around the area,
both large and small.
We've got federal law enforcement,
we've got border patrol.
We have folks from probation and parole, child protective
services, and then we also have folks who either got
their undergraduate degree here at Texas A&M Commerce or
someplace else and have decided they want to continue
in school and obtain a graduate degree.
Folks with a master's degree can teach at the community
college level once they retire.
They can also get a job in a different place, in a
different facet of the system.
So there's lots of flexibility with the degree.
It is a fully 100% online program.
And this makes it unique, obviously because it's online,
but it's also unique because it is an
applied criminology program.
You do not have to have a foundation in criminal justice
to be in this program.
What it is a program for practitioners and working
professionals who are interested in, number one,
either learning about criminal justice, or number two,
augmenting their current knowledge.
We see police departments, we see other criminal justice
agencies actually for promotion requiring their
personnel to obtain an advanced degree.
So it's for anybody in the criminal justice field who's
interested in advancing their knowledge.
Students who come into the program normally take what we
call the core four.
These are the four, essentially, foundation
courses of criminal justice.
We have criminology, we have corrections, we have policing
and law enforcement, and we have courts
and criminal procedure.
Once they do that, they branch out into two specific tracks.
One is criminal justice administration and management
and the other is policy.
If you are in a position at work and you'd like to advance
in that position or you'd like to go somewhere else and
advance, then I highly recommend you take the
criminal justice administration
and management track.
Students who are interested in writing policy, having an
impact on policy, perhaps working for think tanks,
working for politicians, or even working for their own
organizations, that's normally the direction that I encourage
them to go.
They do not write, they do not collect data, they do not
defend a thesis.
It's a non-thesis program.
But that still means that they have to write a very
significant paper for the program.
Quite frankly, the most difficult part is picking that
research question because that question that they choose or
the topic that they choose to discuss has to incorporate
whatever their track specialization is.
Graduate school is a scholarly endeavor.
And while you may know everything there is to know
about whatever subject it is you work in, you may not know
how to discuss that subject in a scholarly way.
And so what we really want to help students learn how to do
better is to learn how to take the knowledge that they read
and the knowledge that they learn and be able to relate it
to folks in a way that's understandable.
Criminal justice is a field that requires quick, on your
feet thinking, usually split second decisions, many times
life and death decisions.
And so we want to be able to provide and give you, the
student, the knowledge that you need
to make better decisions.
I just want to say welcome to the program.
We're so glad you're here.
Look forward to working with you.
Myself and the other faculty in the program really do very
much looking forward to working
with you in the classes.
If you ever have any questions, problems, issues,
comments, please feel free to contact me, Melinda Schlager,
and I look forward to working with you.
Welcome.