Criminal Justice and Criminology

Thank you for your continued support of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Your contribution to this unrestricted fund plays a pivotal role in empowering our department to excel in academic pursuits, foster innovation, and provide unparalleled opportunities for our students, faculty, and staff. With your support, we can continue to make a lasting impact on education, research, and the overall experience of everyone within our community.

Thank you once again for your belief in our mission and for being an essential part of our journey towards excellence. Below are just a few examples of the work our excellence fund accomplished last year. We look forward to keeping you informed about the positive outcomes and achievements that your generosity helps us realize.

With sincere appreciation, GO COUGS!

• We offered scholarships to three graduate students to conduct applied research in the summer of 2023. These students used these funds to support summer research in three areas: 1) sexual violence, 2) drug treatment courts, and 3) recidivism. Their reports are due at the end of October, and we are excited to see what their research uncovers.
• We offered scholarships to assist in the travel costs for three students who participated in our study abroad program. Those scholarships allowed them to participate in CRMJ491, Criminal Justice Study Abroad, which took place in London during spring break 2023. This course focuses on providing an experiential learning opportunity for students to discover the British criminal justice system. They visited several institutions, including a Coroner’s Court, Magistrate Court, the Royal Courts of Justice, a Homicide and Major Investigation Teams of the Metropolitan Police, a Police Cadet diversion program team, and the Broadmoor High Security Psychiatric Institution, along with a number of lectures, and more cultural visits.
• We supported Dr. Hillary Mellinger with funds to conduct research on interpretation, language access, and cultural communication challenges which law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve confront. The goal of this project is to better understand how law enforcement officers approach situations in which there is a language barrier present and to develop scalable solutions and policy recommendations to reduce the impact of these language barriers. This work is ongoing, and we are happy to announce that it has been further supported by a WSU New Faculty Seed Grant.