OATdb Archive - Sam Houston State University

OATdb Archive

2014 - 2015

Criminal Justice And Criminology, Department Of

Goal

Sustained Effective Teaching

In alignment with the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology strategic plan, the department will aim to provide high quality, undergraduate and graduate level education to develop the next generation of scholars in criminal justice and criminology. The Department will also promote and support the development and delivery of a rigorous, contemporary curriculum at both the graduate and undergraduate level. In doing so, students will perceive faculty as effective teachers and courses as high quality. These positive perceptions will contribute to a strong program reputation and program growth.

Objective

CJC Students Will Perceive Faculty Members To Be Effective Teachers And Courses To Be High Quality

Faculty members in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology will engage in effective teaching practices that will contribute to successful delivery of curriculum. In turn, students will view faculty and courses positively resulting in a strong reputation for our program.

KPI

IDEA Evaluations

The Department Of Criminal Justice And Criminology will teach effectively at the undergraduate and graduate Levels. The average score on the IDEA evaluations will be at, or above, the university mean for undergraduate and graduate courses.

Result

Teaching Effectiveness Found To Be Above Average

During the 2014-2015 academic year, IDEA evaluations were administered to all sections of CJC courses. Across all CJC sections taught by full time faculty, the average IDEA evaluation score was 4.45, which was above the average institutional IDEA score. The highest average IDEA score for any faculty member was 5.0, whereas the lowest IDEA score for a faculty member was 3.85. The lowest score was primarily due to one small class taught by the faculty member that had an unusually low IDEA score. Without this outlier, the professor would have have an average IDEA score of 4.3 across the balance of their courses.

Action

Sustained High Level Of Attention To Pedagogy

Faculty are emailed all announcements for teaching workshops and seminars available on campus that aim to convey effective teaching practices. New faculty are directly encouraged by the Chair to register for a minimum of three teaching workshops (August workshop and two Blackboard sessions) per year to further refine their skill sets. Adjunct instructors were forwarded teaching tips on a biweekly to monthly basis with suggestions of new techniques to incorporate in their classes. The value of effective teaching is emphasized to faculty by the Chair through electronic dissemination of individual teaching scores of all faculty (instructor names removed). Faculty who demonstrated much lower than average teaching scores met individually with the Chair in the month following return of IDEA scores to discuss their classes and possible avenues for remediation. The Chair also met with several faculty during the academic year to discuss classroom management issues that were detracting from teaching effectiveness; in some cases dedicating several hours to a limited number of situations.

Goal

Increase Research Productivity And Impact

A priority in our Department's Strategic Plan (see attached) is to sustain a high level of criminal justice and criminology research and scholarly activity. This goal directly supports the College strategic plan and will further bolster the reputation of our program. A strong program reputation will serve to encourage student enrollment as well as attract and retain highly competitive faculty members.

Objective

Faculty Will Target High Impact, Peer Reviewed Outlets For Disseminating Their Research

The department will maintain a level of research productivity and impact within the field of criminal justice and criminology that is competitive with other Ph.D. granting Criminal Justice and Criminology programs.

KPI

Produce An Average Level Or Higher Number Of High Impact Journal Publications As Compared To Other CCJ Ph.D. Programs

The faculty within the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology will sustain a high level of publications that is comparable to the average number of publications with other Ph.D. granting Criminal Justice and Criminology programs in the United States.

Result

Faculty Published Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles Comparable To The National Average For CJC Doctoral Granting Institutions

In the 2014-2015 academic year the Department of CJC had 30 faculty members with tenure or tenure track status. For this criteria, we included only those faculty members who had a research expectation as part of their duties and were not assigned 100 percent to administrative duties. Of the 30 faculty members, 8 faculty members had a partial administrative assignments including the CJC Chair, Interim Chair of Security Studies, CJC Graduate Director, College Level Associate Deans (2), and College Institute Research Directors (3), which accounted for differing levels of effort that in some cases was substantial proportions of the faculty member's time.

These 30 faculty members produced a total of 54 peer reviewed journal articles. For this criteria, we only considered publication of research in peer reviewed, academic journal outlets to align this measure with the benchmark criteria used by the Association of Doctoral Programs in Criminology and Criminal Justice.

The faculty considered herein produced an average of 1.8 publications per faculty member. Many of these publications were in high impact journal publications. According to the Association of Doctoral Criminology and Criminal Justice Program’s 2014 report (accessible at http://www.adpccj.com/documents/2014survey.pdf, also attached), our current ratio is slightly below the the average number of peer reviewed articles produced per faculty members within the field of Criminal Justice and Criminology among Ph.D. granting institutions. The 2014 ADPCCJ report indicates a mean of 2.0, median of 1.96 publications per faculty member, although some of the progams included in the report have a lower teaching load requirement.

Action

Develop Consistent Benchmark For Measuring Department Research Productivity

The publication of peer reviewed research by faculty members is communicated to faculty members throughout the academic year. This serves to recognize faculty member achievements as well as provide continued encouragement to others. Given that the number of faculty members can fluctuate from year to year, it was recognized that our method of comparison should emanate from the annual ADCCJP report rather than examine the raw number of publications between years.

Goal

Sustained Faculty And Administrative Development

Important to any successful organization unit is sustained attention to faculty and administrative development. As the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology is entering its second year, it is critical that priority is given to increased organizational capacity as indicated through this stated goal.

Objective

Competitive Faculty Will Increase

The department will continue to develop and grow by hiring competitive faculty members.

KPI

Addition Of Competitive, High Quality Assistant Professors To The CJC Faculty

As part of the FY 2014-2015, the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology obtained funding to hire two faculty members to support the increasing needs of the Department. In October 2014, the Department of CJC posted an HR-approved advertisement for an Assistant Professor and received a number of highly qualified applications. The Department engaged in interviewing a number of candidates for the new faculty member position.

The addition of faculty members is expected to broaden the discipline specific expertise available to students, faculty and community/agency partners in teaching, research, and service realms.

Result

Successful Addition Of Two CJC Assistant Professors

The Department successfully recruited two high quality individuals to the CJC faculty. Dr. Brandy Blasko and Dr. Ryan Randa both join the faculty in August 2015 as Assistant Professors. See CV attached.

Dr. Brandy Blasko joined the faculty as Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology after completing an interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Departments of Criminology, Law & Society and Psychology at George Mason University. She received her doctorate in Criminal Justice from Temple University. Prior to becoming an academic in 2013, Dr. Blasko worked for a number of years in prison, jail, and outpatient settings conducting treatment, assessments, and research with offending populations. Lying at the intersection of criminal justice and psychology, Dr. Blasko's research focuses broadly on how custodial environments shape interactions and outcomes. She is currently principal investigator of The Prison Project, a longitudinal mixed-method study of the prison experience from the viewpoints of prisoners, prison staff, and administrators. Dr. Blasko is also currently involved in research on: (1) the exercise of discretion in decisionmaking by prison staff and wardens; (2) prisoner suicide; (3) procedural and relational justice within prisons; and (4) the therapeutic alliance in the context of sexual offender treatment. As a licensed clinician, her clinical interests and expertise are in the assessment and treatment of individuals convicted of sexual and violent crimes. Dr. Blasko actively mentors students at all levels and is eager to involve SHSU students in her research.

Dr. Ryan Randa completed his Ph.D. at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Randa also has significant research experience and publication record. He is the current editor of the Journal of School Violence.

Hiring two strong researchers with existing teaching experience will contribute to the Department’s strategic plan, specifically goals 1, 2, 3, and 5 (see attached).

Action

Engage In Active Mentorship Of Assistant Professors

The Department Chair and senior faculty members will actively engage in ongoing mentorship of the new faculty members as they begin working toward tenure and promotion. Both faculty members will meet with the Department Chair regularly to set annual goals and receive feedback on progress. The CJC faculty as a whole will annually review each faculty members as they move toward tenure review. In addition to FES review, each faculty member will be required to annually prepare and submit materials that would be considered as part of the formal tenure review process. Tenured faculty members will review these materials and provide feedback to the faculty member. Deficits will be addressed as needed through the development of an action plan in consultation with the Department Chair.

Update to previous cycle's plan for continuous improvement In response to the stated Plan for Continuous Improvement, faculty members were encouraged to publish in top tier, peer reviewed journals whenever possible. Internal evaluation (FES) of faculty research productivity also reflected this priority. This past year, the administrative leadership sought to enhance the internal dissemination of research and scholarly efforts as well as provide feedback and rewards to faculty who were achieving success. On a regular basis (approximately monthly), faculty were solicited for their scholarly accomplishments and encouraged to share "good news" with the Department Chair. The Chair also monitored traditional publication outlets and used various tools (e.g., google scholar alerts, table of contents alerts) to find new faculty publications. In turn, the Chair provided regular email congratulatory notes to the faculty for the achievements. Also, when possible the Chair obtained and distributed abstracts of published articles to the faculty members at faculty meetings. This approach served to provide ongoing feedback to the faculty as a whole that the goal of research productivity was of significant importance to the Department. More importantly, faculty were provided an opportunity to discover common research interests and forge new research partnerships with their colleagues based on this added knowledge.

Plan for continuous improvement On average, teaching performance was found to be slightly above institutional average. The potential for less effective teaching tends to lie with instructors who are not fully engaged with proximal peers (i.e., adjunct instructors), or those instructors who are relatively junior (i.e., new faculty members). Specific attention was given to those two groups of instructors to dissemination additional knowledge and learning opportunities. A number of positive mentoring relationships have formed between senior and junior faculty to allow for teaching related discussions. Junior faculty and some adjunct instructors also convened with the Chair on numerous occasions during the course of the academic year to discuss students and classroom management, indicating multiple sources of support exist internally. A number of faculty also regularly engage in teaching workshops on campus indicating utilization of sustained support for effective teaching external to the Department. We will continue to closely monitor teaching evaluations and disseminate knowledge while encouraging discussion of effective teaching practices.

In addition to monitoring and reporting the overall IDEA scores for faculty member in our Department, we will seek to assess specific items reported in the IDEA instrument such as the "effective teacher" item. This will allow the Department to consider both the student perceptions of the course in general, but also more specifically the instructor.

The Department of CJC will continue to seek a high level of productivity in peer-reviewed journals with an emphasis on high impact peer reviewed journals as stated in our prior plan for continuous improvement. Efforts to disseminate faculty productivity both internally and with external constituents will continue to be addressed. We will consider our most efficient and effective approaches to sharing our successes in the year ahead. Our focus in the upcoming year will be to strive for an incrase in the average publications per faculty rate in comparison to peer CCJ programs.

It is also important to consider how we will be increase the individual capacity of our faculty members to engage in both effective teaching and a high level of scholarly productivity. As noted above, a large number of our faculty members are engaged in some form of administrative assignments and further organizational capacity is required. Open discussions about workload of faculty will continue to be a priority for the Department to ensure balanced efforts across all faculty members.

Our national reputation among Criminal Justice and Criminology programs continues to be an important indicator of our success in increasing enrollments, attracting top students, as well as attracting and retaining well qualified, sought after faculty members. As noted previously both the top scholars we hire as well as those whom we employ in our Department after other presented with other opportunities and offers for faculty positions, yet they chose to join, or remain on, our faculty. The needs of our program due to increasing enrollments and program expansion, as well as turnover of faculty members, will likely include hiring of an additional faculty member or members in the upcoming hiring cycle. Successful searches in prior years enhance our Department’s national reputation and serve to bolster the likelihood of continued successful faculty searches in the future. We will aim to state our case for an increased number of faculty to meet the needs of our more than 3,100 undergraduate students and 400 graduate students in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology.