-: Well the wonderful thing about our degree
here at West Conn, it is not a textbook
criminal justice degree.
Our title is Justice and Law Administration.
So we offer courses in justice,
we offer courses in law,
and we offer courses in administration.
So that a student coming in thinking
that they wanna do one thing
can very easily change their mind
and end up doing something else
and still have a broad-based enough degree
to be able to be marketable in the workplace.
The requirements for a four-year university
pretty much nationwide are that
if you wanna teach full time,
a tenure track full time position,
that you have to have a PhD in criminal justice
or a very closely related field.
Sociology with a concentration in justice studies,
any number of different things.
We have a number of adjuncts in our division that teach
that have masters degrees, and that's all you need to have
in order to teach at least in the CSU system,
is a master's degree.
You can teach as an adjunct then.
So that's the minimum.
There are opportunities for a little bit of a waiver
here or there depending on a person's background.
People can be academically qualified
or they can be professionally qualified.
And we have a number of adjuncts that teach with us.
Most of them have master's degrees,
but we have a couple that have bachelor's degrees,
but they have such tremendous experience in the field,
the specific field that they're teaching in,
like private security or white collar crime,
that kind of thing.
They could be a retired police officer
who never pursued a PhD or a master's degree,
but they've got a wealth of information
to pass onto our students.
So the full timers are responsible for imparting
the theoretical and philosophical background.
We ask our adjuncts to do some of that,
but we ask our adjuncts to speak to their strengths.
The real world experience that they've had
so that by the time they come to West Conn,
by the time students come to West Conn
they have the blending of the theoretical
and philosophical and the practical experience as well.