SU CJ Newsletter

From the Chair

What a great summer! Well, I guess it depends on who you talk to. I thought it wasn’t too hot, wasn’t too cold; it was fairly dry overall; and no smoke in the air from any U.S. or Canadian fires! A pretty “typical” Seattle summer I thought. I hope that you got some time off and a chance to re-charge the batteries.

This coming academic year is pretty exciting. We have a very large incoming class of first-time undergraduate students as well as transfer students. We will also be welcoming many new students to our MA program. We have two new exciting accelerated degree programs that officially launch this year: Our 3+3 BA/JD program (a six-year pathway to a law degree, rather than the typical seven years), and our 4+1 BA/MA program (a five year pathway to a MA degree, rather than the typical six years). The student handbook has been updated with information about these exciting new programs, and you can expect to hear more about those in the near future.

We also welcome a new full-time faculty member, Dr. Brooke Gialopsos! Dr. Gialopsos has research and teaching interests in victimology, crime prevention, school-based crime, fear of crime and perceptions of risk, deviance, and criminological theory. She will be teaching across the undergraduate and graduate programs, so be sure to look for ‘Dr. Brooke’ and give her a warm welcome.

I look forward to seeing you all on campus, and to another great year!

Matt Hickman

Crime and Justice Research Center

Message from Dr. Jacqueline Helfgott
Director, Crime and Justice Research Center

Hello! I am excited to have this opportunity to share with you some of the goings on of the Crime & Justice Research Center (CJRC). I took on the role of inaugural director of the CJRC in 2018 and it has been my dream come true to be able to focus my energies on research and the ongoing collaborative work our department does with local, state, federal, and private criminal justice agencies. There is not enough space for me to go into detail on of the projects we have underway under the umbrella of the CJRC, but here are some highlights from the 2018-19 academic year:

We are planning our annual continuing education event which will be held on May 22, 2020, 9-5pm in the Casey Commons -- The Death Penalty in the Age of Data, Science, and Abolition.

Registration Cost: $75 General Public | $50 SU Alumni/Faculty/Staff | $25 SU students.    

Register

Registration includes: Continental breakfast and lunch, Parking, and 8-hour Continuing Education certificate.  All proceeds support Seattle University Crime & Justice Research Center continuing education, research, and public events.  

Download the event flyer

We are continuing collaborative partnership with the Seattle Police Department’s Micro-Community Policing Plans.

We are in our 5^th year of this unique collaboration with the Seattle Police Department. The SPD MCPP has employed 26 students to date as research analysts who work as civilian employees with SPD, many of whom have gone on to work at SPD and other law enforcement agencies as officers, crime analysts, paralegals, and crime prevention coordinators.

As part of the SPD MCPP, we are responsible for administering the annual Seattle Public Safety Survey, the 2018 results were released this summer and the 2019 survey will launch October 15 and run through November 30, 2019. The SPD MCPP was recently featured in the SPD Blotter and on Q13 news! See “Annual Seattle University Survey Shows Public Safety Concerns.” Follow SPD MCPP on Twitter! @spd_mcpp. Our current MCPP Research Analysts are MACJ students Taylor Lowery (Southwest Precinct), Anastasiya Shevchuk (North/West Precincts), and Alex Dvorsky (East Precinct), and BACJ student Cierrah Loveness (South Precinct).

We spruced up our website! See: Crime & Justice Research Center.

We will work to continually improve the website so that we can publicly share the work the CJRC is doing. The reports from past and current collaborative projects are shared on the CJRC website. Three new reports were released in the 2018-19 academic year including:

Helfgott, J.B. & Hickman, M.J. (June 30, 2019). The effect of guardian...

• Helfgott, J.B., Connor, D.P., Strah, B.M., & Giuffre, A. (April 3, 2019). Attitudes and Experiences of Registered Sex and Kidnapping Offenders in Washington State: Final Report. Seattle, WA.
• Helfgott, J.B., Parkin, W., Fisher, C., Morgan, L., & Kaur, S. (October 25, 2018). Trends in Misdemeanor Arrests, Referrals, & Charges in Seattle - Final Report. Seattle, WA.

We became part of the consortium of criminal justice centers in the Inter-University Network of Criminal Justice Research Centers (INCJRC). 

The INCJRC is an association of university-based research centers focused on wide range of criminal justice issues. It is a great honor to be a part of this group which is comprised of virtually all of the research centers from the top academic criminal justice departments around the country. I encourage you to take a look at the INCJRC website to learn about the network and the affiliated centers. You can also find the INCJRC on Twitter! @INCJRC1

We went to Roma! for the International Academy of Law and Mental Health Congress!

Roma!

Every other year, I am on the International Scientific Committee for the International Academy of Law and Mental Health Congress which is a fancy way of saying that I organize panels for the conference. One of my goals as CJRC Director is to encourage students to learn and conduct research on crime and justice issues on a global level. There is no better way to learn about criminal justice research being conducted all over the world, than to attend and present at an international academic conference. We have had groups comprised of faculty, students, advisory committee members, criminal justice partners, and alumni travel abroad to present at the IALMH since 2013 in Amsterdam, 2015 in Vienna, and 2017 in Prague.

Every year, the group seems to get larger, and this year we had a record number of students, faculty, alumni, and advisory committee members travel to Rome (including colleagues from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, University of Washington, George Mason, and Texas A&M International University) who traveled from Seattle to Rome who received travel support from the CJRC to attend. A total of 20 presenters including 8 students - 4 graduate and 4 undergraduate who presented research findings from projects involving over 30+ co-authors working on research involving academic-criminal justice collaborative partnerships. I also got a chance to catch up with former SU philosophy professor and dean of Matteo Ricci College Dr. Michael Andrews who is now the director of the John Felice Rome Center which is affiliated with the Loyola University Chicago. What a trip!

This is just a snapshot of all we have been working on. Please contact me if you have any questions about the work we are doing through the CJRC. Until next time!

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Faculty-Student Softball Game!

The first annual SU Criminal Justice faculty-student softball game took place in May. We all had a blast! Stay tuned for another game in spring 2020!

We even got to play with two of our CJ major SU Softball pro champions. Special thanks to the SU-CJ Club for organizing this event!  

Official score: Undergrads = 5, Faculty/Grad students = 4!

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Congratulations MACJ students!

Several of our current MACJ students have already been hired and many of our alumni have moved onto new positions and adventures.

• MACJ Student, Ann Forsman-Adams, was hired as the Managing Editor for the journal Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society.
• MACJ Student, Katelyn Royal was hired as an agent with Federal Bureau of Investigation.
• MACJ Student, Enedelia Garcia was hired at REACH, as a Reentry Care Coordinator.
• MACJ Student, Angela Costello was hired at as a case manager at Community & Family Services Foundation.
• MACJ Student, Natalie Ewegen, was promoted to Loss Prevention Manager at two Nordstrom Rack stores.
• MACJ Student, Kaely Wickham was hired as a Supportive Services for Veteran Families Case Manager with the Community Psychiatric Clinic. She also will be starting a volunteer position with the Seattle Police Department's Victim Support Team.
• MACJ Students, Georgia Burns and Taylor Lowery, were offered consulting jobs with Choose 180 after their excellent work they did with the organization in the context of Dr. Peter Collins’ Organizational Theory class.
• MACJ Graduate (2016), Sara Murphy was promoted to a laboratory technician with the DNA section at the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab.
• MACJ Graduate (2018), Lauren Morgan, was accepted into the Ph.D. Program at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.
• MACJ Graduate (2019), Toshiko Hasegawa, was appointed by Governor Jay Inslee as Executive Director of the Washington State Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs. She is currently the youngest person serving a as a member of the Governor's Cabinet.
• MACJ Graduate (2019), Katlynn McDaniels, presented at the International Conference on Law and Mental Health in Rome, Italy. Following the conference, she relocated back to New York and is looking into pursuing Ph.D. programs in Cognitive Psychology.
• MACJ alumni Carol Burciaga, Devan Duenas, Andrea Giuffre, Caitlin Healing, Maurya Hiden, Gloria Lara, Stephanie Martinez, Karmen Schuur, Brittany Stinett, Kelly Szabo, Chelsea Toby, and Elisabeth Walls were all published in Victims of Violence: For the Record, an edited volume by Dr. William Parkin and Dr. Peter Collins examining violent victimization and its representation in the media.
• MACJ Graduate (2019), Toshiko Hasegawa, successfully defended her Thesis in June of 2019.
• MACJ Graduate (2019), Kabrianna Tamura, successfully defended her Thesis in June of 2019. 

Send Us Updates!

Send news of the work you are doing for inclusion in a future Seattle University Department of Criminal Justice newsletter and/or Social Media post to cjsocialmedia@seattleu.edu.  

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