Justice Studies - Department of Chemistry - San Jose State University

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1. Executive Summary1.1 Description of the Department and its Programs: The Department of Justice Studies(“JS”) offers a B.S. in Justice Studies, an M.S. in Justice Studies, two B.S. degrees in ForensicScience, a minor in Justice Studies, and is one of three sponsoring departments for theinterdisciplinary Legal Studies Minor. In Fall 2007, the FTE/F for JS is 13.3, FTEA/C is .6, andthe FTE/S is 454.4. JS awarded approximately 159 B.S. degrees (156 in JS and 3 in ForensicSciences) and 20 M.S. degrees in 2005-2006.Since the last program review in Fall 2000, the name of the department and its degrees waschanged. Formerly the “Administration of Justice Department,” in 2004 the department changedits name to “Justice Studies.” The name change was undertaken because the faculty felt the newname better reflected the curriculum, the state of the field nationally, the faculty’s areas ofexpertise, and the liberal arts nature of the degree (i.e., its foundation in the social sciences andhumanities). Degrees awarded were formerly B.S. and M.S. in Criminal Justice Administration,and are now B.S. and M.S. in Justice Studies. Further discussion is in part 3.1.b below.In addition, since the last program review JS participated with the departments ofCommunication Studies and Political Science to develop and implement an interdisciplinaryminor in Legal Studies. JS also added two interdisciplinary B.S. degrees in Forensic Science(one concentration in Chemistry, and one concentration in Biology). The Forensic Scienceprogram is not included in this Program Review. It will require a separate review schedule andprocess, as it is also undergoing the steps necessary to become an accredited program with itsnational accrediting body, and it was not formally put into place until the 2003-04 academicyear. Furthermore, given that program’s core curriculum in the sciences, it will likely require areview process that includes the participation of the Biology and Chemistry departments, theDean of Science, and an external reviewer team with the requisite scientific expertise.1.2 Synopsis of the Previous Program Review RecommendationsThe external reviewer recommended the following: (1) instituting college-based graduate staffsupport to coordinate with Graduate Studies and serve all CASA grad students; (2) addressingspace constraints to enable faculty to work more productively; (3) exploring a college-basedcentral advising system; (4) addressing course overlap between SJ and sociology; (5) and at theuniversity level, acquiring essential library resources (journals, books, data sets, referencematerials) to support the continuation of graduate education.CASA Dean Ego recommended the following for the AJ (now JS) Department: (1) activeparticipation in the joint doctoral program with UC Davis and CSU Fresno; (2) explore ways tofund graduate assistant positions; (3) pursue creative scheduling to meet student demands,including experimenting with offering courses at non-traditional times, at off-campus sites, andusing online instructional formats; (4) explore a curriculum emphasis in technology,environmental, and corporate crime to strengthen ties between the local community and thedepartment; (5) explore ways to fund staff assistance for the graduate program; (6) pursueupgrading classrooms to “smart classrooms”; (7) review library resources in order to enhance1
crime and justice resources available; (8) talk to Sociology about reducing course overlap toreduce competition for FTES; (9) continue outreach and recruitment efforts to increase numberof majors.The external reviewer’s recommendations were primarily addressed to the college and university(external reviewer recommendations 1, 2, 3, and 5). As noted in the department’s response toher recommendations, recommendation 4 related to a problem outside of the department’scontrol – university approval of a new sociology course (Soci 151) that overlapped with anexisting AJ course (AJ/JS 136). Thus, although the department agreed with and supported theexternal reviewer’s recommendations, they were largely beyond the department’s ability topursue directly. To the department’s knowledge, these recommendations were not pursued bythe college and university.In regard to the Dean’s recommendations, the JS Department has pursued each of them tovarying degrees. (1) Joint doctoral program. In 2002, JS participated in discussions regardingthe proposed joint doctoral program. The degree program proposal had been a joint venture ofCSU-Fresno and UC Davis since its inception in 1998, and was approved to move forward to seeif it was feasible in 1999. JS’s involvement was solely going to be in offering graduate classesthat could be included in the degree program; we were not invited to be full partners in theprogram. Due to logistical and curricular compatibility issues, our department, in consultationwith the other two universities, elected not to participate in the program. (2) Graduate funding.When AIM funds were available under Provost Goodman in 2002-2003, some JS faculty usedthose funds for paid graduate assistant positions. Faculty with external grants have also usedsome of their research funds for graduate assistants. However, due to budget constraints and thedemands of the undergraduate program, JS has been unable to secure consistent funding forgraduate assistants. (3) Creative scheduling. JS has experimented with a number of creativescheduling approaches, including Saturday classes, night classes, online offerings, summer andwinter session courses. Many courses currently have web components, and three high-demandundergraduate courses are now regularly taught as fully online courses (JS 100W, JS 105, and JS132). In addition, JS 132 was also offered as an “online mediated” course with a cable TVcomponent in AY 2006-2007. Given the number of majors served on campus, the departmentdecided it was not a wise use of resources to offer classes off-site, as online courses better servethe needs of distant students. (4) New curriculum emphasis. In several searches JS advertisedfor new faculty in the areas of corporate, environmental, and “cyber” crime but did not findsuitable candidates. The department does address corporate, environmental and white collarcrime in its curriculum but given its new direction toward justice, broadly conceived, rather thanthe narrower area of criminal justice, an “emphasis” in technology, environmental and corporatecrime is no longer a priority. (5) Graduate staff. Since our last review, we have been able toincrease our departmental staffing from 1.5 to 2.5 positions. As a result, we have been able todevote more staff resources to aid in the graduate program administration. However, due to theimbalance of undergraduate students served and graduate students served within the department(we overwhelmingly serve undergraduates), it has not been feasible to hire dedicated staff for thegraduate program. (6) Classroom upgrades. As noted in Section 2, JS has invested in updatingone classroom (MH 520) into a smart classroom, added teaching technology to its conferenceroom, and purchased equipment to enable all faculty to use technology in their teaching. Asecond classroom, MH 523, was selected for university conversion to a smart classroom; that2
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Justice Studies - Department of Chemistry - San Jose State University

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