Criminal Justice Concentration

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Criminal JusticeConcentration

• Pre-Advising PowerPoint

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.