Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Virtual Information Session

All mine are special for some reason.

All right. It looks like we are in. Hello, everyone. We're chatting about pets. I hope that you can appreciate the the fun in all of that. We have just hit our 12:00 mark. We're going to give everyone just a moment to get logged in, make sure you can hear all of us and we'll get started in just a moment. But thank you so much. If you're watching this as a recording, just bear with us for just a second or Fast forward a couple seconds and you can dive right in. All right?

OK, great. Well, it looks like we are all set, so we'll start. So good afternoon, everyone, or whatever time you happen to be watching this recording. My name is Jen Radwanski, and I'm the Associate Director for Graduate Admissions here at Stockton University. So thank you for taking the time to come and learn more about our Master of Arts and Criminal Justice program here at Stockton. We have some phenomenal guests with us today to tell you more about the program and why you should consider applying for this program. So let me just talk to you about some logistics about how this works.

Again, if you're watching this pre recorded, we will give you an opportunity at the end to write down our contact information and to send us any questions that you may have. If you are joining us live, we do have a chat feature on the right hand side and you're welcome to put questions into the chat there. We do recommend waiting to hold your questions towards the end because more than likely we will get to your questions throughout the presentation. But if we don't, write them down on a piece of paper and then you can type them in when we get to the final slide. In addition to the program chair, I'm also joined by an alum and a current Mac J student.

We we formally call this one Mac J as a.

The acronym, but these, these folks have excelled in this program and at the end of the presentation, they are also going to share a little bit more information about their experience. So to kick off, I'm going to have them introduce themselves formally and then we will turn things over to Doctor Tartaro who's the program chair to conduct our presentation. So Connor, do you want to go first?

Yeah, how is everyone doing? My name is Connor. I currently work in the graduate admissions office, and I'm also a graduate from last spring from the Mac J program.

Hi everyone, my name is Casey. I am currently enrolled in the Match J program. I'm in my last semester so I'm excited to graduate but sad to leave the program.

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us as well. As I mentioned, we will be here on the sidelines in the chat and then we'll bounce back on at the end. But without further ado, Doctor Tartaro, would you like to take things from here?

Sure. Well, thank you for joining us. My name is Christine Tartaro, and I am the chair of the Master of Arts and Criminal Justice program here at Stockton. I've been here since the program's founding, so I've enjoyed being able to watch the program grow and also watch all of our alumni go out and be successful practitioners in the field. Some have gone on to law school, some have gone on to get their PhDs. So it's been really wonderful to see so.

Let me get started and just tell you a little bit about what our program is all about, what you could expect from us.

So for our degrees we have is a Masters in Criminal Justice, but we do have three different track options. The 1st is Forensic Psychology, the 2nd is Homeland Security and the third is Justice Studies. And as we go on today, I will talk to you about the specific curriculum requirements for each of these.

In terms of the overall degree requirements, we require 36 credits, so that is 12. Three credit courses and so students usually take full time. Students usually take about two years to do this, and 24 credits of it were eight classes consists of the core curriculum.

Which really gives students a great overall knowledge of the criminal justice system. I'm really proud of our core curriculum and the balance that it has. And then we have 12 credits or four classes in electives and and the electives are determined by what track you're going to choose.

So let's get into the core curriculum a little bit. So I have typically full and typically spring in here because we can't promise that we will always do things like this, but this is how we have been doing things.

We offer crime data and analysis and research and evaluation in the first semester. We recommend to students whenever possible to take those from the beginning because those two classes really help students on all the rest of the courses. A lot of people don't realize that criminal justice is a social science.

And so, so much of what we do is found in founded in research and understanding what works and what doesn't and you really can't interpret the research without those two classes. So then from there we go to victimology and corrections also in the fall semester usually Then in the spring we offer criminological theories. Criminal justice policy and planning is actually the capstone course and we've been offering that in the fall and spring to help students lately law enforcement and policing.

Is also offering in the spring as is judicial process. So you see you get all the branches of the criminal justice system in our core.

So let's get to the track. So the first track that I wanted to discuss is forensic psychology. This has two required track courses. So everybody would have to take forensic and legal psychology and forensic psychopathology. From there they get to then choose elective SO1 Elective has to be specific to the track. So the track specific electives that we have are drugs, crime in the criminal justice system, criminal psychology.

Advanced and Advanced topics and Forensic Psychology.

After that, students can take an open elective. So that means that if they want to take an elective from one of the other tracks, they are welcome to do so. They can use that open elective for an internship. They can use it for an A an independent study that they would do under the supervision of a faculty member. So there's a lot of options there.

Our next track is is Homeland Security and for the required courses here actually I just realized there is an error here. The required courses are Homeland Security Policy and Fundamentals and Theories of Emergency Management. I apologize I have to adjust this slide. The track electives are Terrorism, Cyber Crime, Borders and Displacement and Geographic Analysis and Profiling.

And then this track also comes with an open elective. So to summarize, you need 2 mandatory track courses, one elective within the track and then an open elective. So that open elective if the person if if you wish to do an internship or an independent study or just take if if one of the forensic psychology classes seem interesting to you, you may take that or then we have other additional electives.

Finally, we had Justice Studies. Now this is the most flexible of our 3 tracks. This requires students to simply take the 8 core courses and then they can take any combination of four electives. So if they really are looking at our course catalog and they find the the Homeland Security electives interesting, they like the forensic psychology ones. They like the additional electives that we have that are not affiliated with either those tracks, then this is the track for you because you get to take any mix and match that you would like.

Including also doing an internship if you would like, or an independent study.

I wanted to point out a couple of specific MACJ electives that we have that would fit an open elective spot or any elective spot for justice studies. We have a regular independent studies which most of you are probably familiar with from undergrad, but we also have an advanced independent study research slash publication, which is an independent study where the intent is to come out of it and eventually get.

A publication? Maybe a conference presentation?

I can tell you I did one of these a year ago with a student. We wound up presenting at 2 conferences and then we published something as well. So that was a pretty exciting experience. Independent studies, Well, I already went over that. And then finally, internships. We have a great internship coordinator. We have affiliation agreements with all sorts of agencies in the area, federal, state, local, county, private. And we even if if you happen to find something that you want and we don't have an articulation agreement with that agency, we are willing to work on that.

And get that set up. So that's a pretty exciting experience and that's something you could do during the school year or also during the summer, but you have to have 18 credits before you go and embark on the internship.

This is what we recommend in terms of course sequencing for people. Now sometimes it's not possible due to people's work schedules or their decision to go part time status.

But this is what we would recommend if it is possible to do this. We recommend for full time no more than three classes a semester, because I know that people are accustomed at the undergrad level to taking four to five classes, but it really there is a different level of intensity and rigor at the grad program.

And so we would not recommend doing more than that because it just gets to be too difficult.

So this is what we would recommend. You could take a quick look at this, pause the video if you are watching this recorded later and and get a sense of what we think would be the ideal type of schedule. And this is for people who would start in the spring semester because we do accept applications in the fall for spring emissions. So we just kind of reverse this a little bit and.

Flip the spring in the fall semesters.

A little bit of information about classes in Mac Ji just mentioned that the classes are are more rigorous.

Definitely they are. We have fewer classes than undergrad. Obviously, undergrad your your undergrad degree requires anywhere from, I think 36 to 48 credits, depending where you're coming from.

We have just 36 credits in the entire program. So there's obviously in at the graduate level, you don't have to take general studies requirements or or anything like that. So these are smaller classes though our classes, our graduate courses are capped at 20 and that allows us to have a lot more interaction with the students because we do expect.

There to be lively discussions and full class participation, so there's really no place to hide in our classes. Our classes typically meet once a week and they're they tend to be longer. So classes usually are once a week for about 3 hours. A little under 3 hours. Attendance is absolutely mandatory. There's an expectation that you're going to be there for every class at the grad level.

And we do occasionally offer hybrid classes, and these are done two different ways. Some hybrids will meet in person every other week and then on the off weeks do an asynchronous.

Class and other instructors choose to meet every week, but they only meet for half the time, so for an hour and a half, and then the other half is in the hybrid format. So we we have two different ways of doing things here.

Want to just talk about a quick couple of opportunities that we have? We offer paid graduate assistantships. These allow students to get research experience while getting paid working with faculty on research projects.

And a lot of these are things that you can do remotely that you don't have to physically be on campus to do. And we do have a graduate student office space, though. G2O5 is a room with a bunch of desks that our graduate system students can get key access to. Our graduate assistants can get key access to and have a place to work and store files on campus.

So you have to be matriculated into the program to be eligible for this. And once you have an A Macjpa, it has to be 3.5 or above to be eligible. So the application deadline that there's a a a a grad school application that's not specific to Mac J.

They are typically due.

October 31st for the spring semester.

March 31st for the Fall semester. So anybody looking to in the Spring semester apply for fall. You would want to get your Mac J application in and also your your graduate assistant application in it before March 31st. That way you could begin the running for consideration.

As I mentioned earlier, another great opportunity we have is internships. This allows people to get experience in the practitioner world in their area of interest we do have.

Internships that are specific to the tracks now. Now, it's not like somebody who's Justice studies would be prohibited from doing a Homeland Security internship. But I'm just saying if you were interested in Homeland Security, we actually absolutely do have internships with Homeland Security agencies.

In order to do this, you have to have completed 18 credits though, so some people choose to do it during the summer semester when they already have that. So basically you have to be halfway through the program at the start of the internship in order to be eligible, and you have to have a minimum of a 3.0 GPA.

So we have an internship coordinator who handles the whole application process. We have a formal application process online I believe. Actually this is another thing I I I I apologize, I did not update. I believe we got rid of the background check, the mandated paid background check. I'm sorry about that. And so I have the the internship deadlines on here and.

If you get a chance to do it, I really encourage you to I I know some students who have done this and it has really shaped.

The direction of their career now, for good or bad. Some people have done internships and they absolutely love it, and some people hate it. But I always tell students finding out what you don't like is extremely valuable because now you know that you don't want to waste any more time and money going One Direction. You need to go someplace else.

Other features of our program is we have the Alpha Phi Sigma, the the Criminal Justice Honor Society, which is a national organization. We do have that here. We have a club on the MACJL, it's the MACJ League. That they, I don't know if they were Justice League's fans or what, but that's what the students called it and we try to do some field trips and fun events every once in a while. The university has a graduate student council where there is funding available for for the different clubs, which is very important.

We have a designated graduate student lounge on the campus, so graduate students who want to go to have a meeting and just relax can have a quiet space.

There are conference and travel monies available through various avenues at the university, so students who want to go to conferences or are presenting alongside their their faculty mentors can do that. And we also do have a writing tutor specific to the graduate students.

And that that person has been doing fantastic workshops throughout the year that are really, really helpful to the students.

I do want to mention for any of you who have are currently working full time in the criminal justice or related field, we do offer a 20% discount for people who have jobs like that. So please let us know if you fit into that category so we can work on making sure you get the discount. And now I'm going to hand it over to Jen to do the last slide.

Play.

Awesome. Can you hear me All right. I just want to make sure it was working perfect. So just to go over a couple items. And Doctor Tartara, thank you so much for all of that insight and and telling us more about the program specifically. And just so for our final slide before we turn things over to our alum and our current student, I want to just go over a few things that you might want to know about the physical application itself. So the application is fully online. It can be found on our grad website on the Stockton website, the priority deadline for fall 2024.

Is July 1st, so you want to make sure you get it in before that date. But as was mentioned, if you're considering the Assistantship process, then you'll want to get it in sooner than that, and that application is a part of this application as well. It's all within the same process. So this application, if you are a Stockton student, we do have something we want to mention to you all. There is a direct entry opportunity for Stockton students who are either in their final semester and graduating in May or this summer, or have graduated within the last year. So if you have a 3.3 GPA and the proper prerequisites, that can be found on the Direct Entry website.

It does allow you to do a much shorter application and to waive the application fee. So this is a great opportunity for our Stockton, recent Stockton students and grads who fall into the proper prereqs and the GPA.

Otherwise the traditional application will be the way that everyone is is doing this process. There is an essay involved. There are three letters of recommendation that are required. These are electronic letters of recommendation. And those letters all you have to do is to submit your recommenders name and their e-mail address. We always suggest you have a conversation with them first to make sure that they know that this is coming so they keep an eye out for it, make sure it doesn't go to their junk mail. But these should be individuals who can speak to your academic success or to your work in the field of criminal justice. So you want it to be folks who who really can talk to how well you'll do in Graduate School. And so even though your next door neighbor may have known you for a very long time and can give you a great character reference, are they really going to be able to speak to your abilities?

You know, academically. And so that's what we're really looking for with these letters of recommendation. So that's important.

Umm, for those who do not have a three-point 3.49 GPA or higher or so 5.0 or higher, so 3.49 or below, The GRE is required as well, and so those scores can be submitted to our office. You should include that when you're taking the GRE. You can take a screenshot while you're taking it to submit temporarily, but then we'll have to have the official GRE score sent to us electronically as well. You'll be submitting a resume to us and so that can be loaded as APDF, which you can load yourself. And then finally official transcripts need to be sent. Now these should be official transcripts from any institution you attended, so if you have.

An associate's degree or you took classes at a Community College, or if you transferred between colleges, we need to receive all of those transcripts. If you have an additional masters degree or have any masters credits in any other institution will need those transcripts as well. They can be emailed or they can be mailed to us or sent electronically. We strongly encourage that they be sent electronically. It just goes a little bit quicker and it's a little bit more efficient of a process. You can have those sent to grad school at stockton.edu. If you are a Stockton student, we can pull those transcripts for you. Just let us know when you've started your application and we'd be happy to attach those for you.

So those are some of the main components that are involved in the, the application process itself and any of the admissions team in graduate admissions would be happy to to answer questions for you. So that brings us to our final slide here, which is just to turn things over to you and to see if you have any additional questions. And while you're typing those in on the side in the chat feature, I am going to turn things over to both Connor and Casey to tell us a little bit more about their experience and to share any insights that they have as students or as a student here at Stockton. So Casey, would you like to go first?

Yeah, absolutely. As Doctor T mentioned, there are tons of opportunities in this program being that it is a face to face program. So all of your courses really are going to be in person. Some courses are going to be hybrid style where you're meeting every other week, but you are going to be meeting in person. But with that comes a really awesome amount of opportunities for students. As a Mac J student in my last semester, I was able to go to a conference. I'm also part of our Mac J Club, which is awesome. So actually my friends and I were all in the E board together and were able to plan trips. We went to the FBI Academy in October and we're planning a trip to DC.

For April, to see the law enforcement museum and the Spy museum, So that's really exciting. And then I also have an internship as well and that's accounting for course credit and it's in my field. Hopefully it will turn into a full time position. We're all praying that it does. So there's tons of opportunities for students within this program to kind of go on their make the program yours, kind of go on your own path a little bit. You know, you get, you have these concentrations, you have these required courses. But really what you do outside of the coursework is what makes your experience and the program, you know, getting involved.

With other people in the program going on, these field trips, going on these other academic excursions like conferences are really important, Connor.

Yeah. I'd like to touch up a little bit on the course sequencing that Doctor Tartaro was mentioning earlier.

I started the program during COVID which.

Connor, we can't see you. I think you turned your camera off, but we can hear you.

Yeah.

I see you.

Yeah.

You can see Connor. Oh, all right. I just don't see it. Keep going. I don't know what's going on. As long as you can all see him, Fantastic. Sorry.

But I started the program during COVID and as with a lot of people, people's financials kind of changed a little bit. I intended to start the program full time, but work I was probably working over 40 hours a week and the great thing with this program is there is a part time option.

I was able to complete the program in three years and you're able to do a lot with it because you're able to do there's typically a course or two offered over the summer.

And then you're also able to do the internships over the summer and it kind of gives you some more time during the fall and spring semesters for people who may have outside obligations from school. So the program is really flexible in that regard that you're not having to be stuck in three classes every semester. So that was a benefit for me. And then also Doctor Tartaro mentioned, a lot of students go on to do law school or go on to do their doctorates. I'm personally in the process right now of going through the law school application process.

And I personally think this program set me up very well for law school you do. It's a very critical, thinking, intensive program.

Just in everyday life, you're able to analyze documents.

Get kind of the main ideas out of things a lot faster in your critical thinking. Really, really does evolve because of this program and it has helped me out in everyday life.

If I may add something, thank you Connor and Casey for all that. We have an an Advisory Board for the Masters program and it consists of leading practitioners in our area and we bring them in every year to talk to them about the state of the program, but to ask their opinions about employment trends and what they need. And the number one thing that they have been telling us that they need is critical thinkers and people who know how to handle data and to take this piece of information and apply it over here.

And some people do moan about, oh, having to take the research and the statistics and and and the theories classes. But those classes are the ones that have the most intensive application of critical thinking. And so while people don't realize it, those are the ones that are really training people to do the jobs that the police chiefs and and all the other leaders in criminal justice are telling us they want to see.

And I've had students come back to me years later and talk about the importance of our classes and how it has improved their writing and it has improved their their thinking abilities. And those are the things that actually have have attracted the employers the most.

That's awesome. Great. Well, Casey and Connor, thank you so much for taking the time to share your insight. I've been keeping an eye on the chat and it doesn't appear that we have any questions in the chat here. So I'll go ahead and just to thank all of you for sharing your insight and telling us more about the program. For those of you who are watching us live, thank you for being here. And for those who are watching this virtually recorded, please don't hesitate to contact us and to reach out. We're here to assist you and I hope that everyone has a wonderful day. Thank you so much.

Care.