Core Courses

MSCJ 701 Crime and Organizational Theory into Practice
This course introduces students to the critical theories that help explain or give context to both criminal behavior and how organizations function. Particular emphasis is placed on applying the theoretical frameworks to policy formation and analysis.

MSCJ 702 Crisis Management and Media Relations
This course begins with the conceptual frameworks that explain how the modern 24/7 'mediated' world impacts the way organizations, agencies, and firms function or relate to citizens and customers. Importantly, the class will show how agency leaders can avoid making problems or the perceptions of problems worse by mishandling or communicating. Case studies will be utilized to show students how to handle specific types of crisis management situations.

MSCJ 703 Budget Analysis
This class will teach students the core skills associated with the development and management of budgets for agencies or functional departments. Students will synthesize and apply budgeting concepts using Microsoft Excel through real-world examples and case studies.

MSCJ 704 Assessing Organizational Performance
This course will build-off of previous coursework and learn more refined approaches to assessing the outcomes and methods organizations employ to meet their goals. This course will look at a broad range of topics and case studies from critical incidents to human resource issues.

MSCJ 705 Applied Data Analysis and Decision-Making
This class will teach students how to empirically analyze and present data for informed decision-making. Students will use Excel to analyze macro level trend issues such as crime rates as well as micro level inter-departmental problems. This course is designed to ensure that students are informed consumers of administration statistics and prepare them for the advanced quantitative electives offered later in the curriculum.

MSCJ 706 Ethics and the Administration of Justice
The course will provide students with an overview of ethics and ethical dilemmas which practitioners will face in the course of their profession. Using both classical and modern models students will develop skills necessary to identify and evaluate ethical and moral challenges in policing, bioethics, and corporate practices.

Specialization Courses

MSCJA 811 Survey of Justice Administration
The purpose of this course is to expose students to the literature on the major theories of management in criminal justice. As such, an in-depth examination of several theories, from the earliest classical explanations to contemporary interpretations, will be reviewed and critiqued. Specific attention will be paid to the proposition, assumptions, and the empirical validity of these theories of management. Current debates will also be highlighted and the relationship between theory and practice will be explored. Management topics relevant to the field of criminal justice, such as accountability, bureau pathology, the CompStat model, alternative resource allocation models and several others will be introduced.

MSCJA 812 Bureau Pathology in Justice Administration
The purpose of this course is to relationships between the structures/processes of organization and the "pathologies" to which organizations are prone, with particular emphasis on public sector and non-profit organizations. In this course students will learn to apply and sharpen their understanding of the nature and causes of organizational pathology by closely examining specific instances of organizational failure to apply those lessons. Students will also gain a deeper understanding of how management policy and employee behavior can undermine the efficient and lawful delivery of goods and services by public, non-profit and private organizations.

MSCJA 815 Special Topics in Justice Administration
This course is an overview of policy debates in criminal justice organizations, methods of resolving these debates and implementation of policy decisions. Students will work together in considering the background of policy debates, including the effect of their political contexts and, importantly, relevant empirical research and theories of criminal justice.

MSCJ 852 Cyber and Surveillance Law and Governance
The regulatory and legislative landscape pertaining to cyber governance in both the public and private sectors is complex and ever shifting and frequently challenged by new and innovative technologies. In this course students will deepen their knowledge of the law as it pertains to: data collections, privacy, search and seizure, national security, financial services and personal data, and liability. The underlying intention of this course is to make the legal aspects accessible to the non-attorney whose practice must be guided by sophisticated legislative and regulatory frameworks.

MSCJ 853 Forensic Management of Digital Evidence
This course presents an overview of digital evidence and computer crime by focusing on a systematic approach to investigating a crime based on the scientific method. This course builds-off of the legal aspects course and dives putting legal aspects into the practice of investigations, including investigations of complex organizational and group structures. The curriculum takes a crime scene(s) to court room approach and includes: Data recovery, remote storage, file systems of various systems and procedure and tools for properly collecting and examining digital evidence from computers and report writing. Preservation of volatile data, preparation of evidence for submission to grand juries, criminal and civil courts, providing expert testimony, handling counter-measures, and interacting with ISP’s and providers of social media content.

MSCJ 855 Cybercriminology [Elective]
This course seeks to further understanding of cyber deviance and its control. It is an advanced theory-based course that extends the criminological curriculum of previous program coursework and explicitly extends in into the realm of cyber criminals and criminality. We consider selected problematic social, legal, and policy issues associated with the rapid global growth in the use of the Internet and digital devices in everyday life and commerce. In addition to exploring frameworks for understanding the nuances of cybercriminality it also explores how theory can be applied to development of policies for mitigation and prevention.

MSCJ 856 Cybercrime and Digital Law Enforcement
That threats of cybercrime to entities large and small is not a new or innovative notion and has been made a critical focus by the U.S. Government for over 10 years. That said, there is a striking array of both complex and shockingly simple forms of criminal wrongdoing that can occur in the cyber realm. This course focuses on the substantive topics of cybercrime and surveillance and data collection and management systems and includes topics such as: Computer intrusions, malware, fraud, IP theft, wardriving, online vice and exploitation, economic espionage, cyber terrorism and hacktivism, and beyond.

MSCJ 861 Forensic Science - Crime Scene to Court Room
This course will engage students in supervised research in forensic science. The goal of this course is to allow the student to demonstrate their research capability under the supervision of university faculty.

MSCJ 862 Crime Lab Management
This course provides an overview of key components of quality assurance in the crime laboratory. The students will be introduced to what is required in the planning and implementation of a quality system in the crime laboratory including the development of quality manual, the need to produce sound, scientific data using appropriate standards and controls, developing written procedures and method validation. This course will also assist the student in understanding how to perform a quality system audit. This will be achieved by describing the key principles in a quality assurance program with reference to the ISO guidelines, supplemental requirements of accreditation bodies, and other relevant organizational standards.

MSCJ 863 Quality Assurance in the Crime Laboratory
This course presents an overview of crime laboratory management. As an organization, the crime laboratory does not fit neatly into any particular mold. It has components of both the public and private sectors, and, in many cases, has civilian and sworn employees. For this reason it is important for crime laboratory directors and other administrators charged with the management of a forensic science entity to understand how this entity fits into the criminal justice system.

MSCJ 864 Current Topics Affecting Forensic Science
This course is an overview of policy debates in forensic science organizations, methods of resolving these debates and implementation of policy decisions. Students will work together in considering the background of policy debates, including the effect of their political contexts and, importantly, relevant empirical research.

Electives

MSCJ 814 Policy Analysis & Program Evaluation
This course is intended to provide the graduate student insight into the realm of program and policy evaluation. While the course will be aimed primarily at police program and policy evaluation, there will be many instances where general, broad sweeping concepts will be places into a broader framework so as to accompany many aspects of the discipline in both the public as well as private sectors.

MSCJ 816 Applied Situational Crime Prevention
The Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) theoretical paradigm is the dominant construct under which modern crime and prevention is based-on. This course is designed to advance the practitioners theoretical insights and extend those, through class projects, to immediately applying and evaluating the results. In this respect, the course can be viewed as an advanced applied methods course.

MSCJ 818 Responses to Crime Victimization
This course is designed to provide students with a thorough overview of victim services, both from a theoretical and academic perspective, and a practical, applied perspective. Students will learn about the history and evolution of victim right and victim services, the most relevant models of responses to victimization, and will learn more substantively about the types of victimizations practitioners must respond to. The course will include a policy-oriented approach to studying victim response, both in critically analyzing past and current practices, and in determining the best course of action for future best practices.

MSCJ 819 Sex Offenders
This course provides an interdisciplinary understanding of sex crimes and sex offenders. Drawing from theory and sex offender typologies the course explores the similarities and differences among a variety of sex offenders. Following this background investigation a series of key sex offender research domains are further examined with profound policy implications: sex offender recidivism, sex offender specialization, sex offending over the life-course, sex offender registration and community notification, and the collateral consequences. Additional topics including sex offender treatment programs and internet-based sex offending are also discussed.

MSCJ 826 International Risk Analysis
Social, political, and economic globalization sets the stage for this course. Increasingly, a firm’s success or failure is integrally related to factors in different countries, states, and jurisdiction. "Just in Time" logistics and the variances associated with political, economic, and social risks have a direct impact on both domestic and international firms. The purpose of this course is to provide students with a hands-on experience in conducting the kind of international risk analysis that is increasingly demanded.

MSCJ 844 Fundamentals of Emergency Management
This course introduces you to emergency management and the role of the emergency manager in dealing with a variety of threats. We will compare and contrast different events, learn the history of emergency management, understand new and emerging disasters and hazards, learn the overlapping phases of disaster, and understand the roles of different levels of government. Emergency management represents a challenging field because many people may ignore warning, or are unable to prepare for disasters.

MSCJ 855 Cyber Criminology
This course provides and introduction of novices, and a deeper understanding, of cyber deviance and its control. This course takes the perspective that an individual or groups of individuals are perpetrators of cyber crime and deviance. In addition, it uses theory to understand the nature of cybercrime. Emphasis will be given to criminals and victims, law enforcement, state and federal laws, criminological theories, and the development of research topics in cybercrimes.

MSCJ 894 Forensic Psychology
This course is designed to review, at some depth, the science of human behavior as it relates to forensic issues and challenges that confront the criminal justice professional. Your participation in the discussion board is essential to keeping this course relevant and grounded in the real world. Using logic and reasoning skills, gathering intelligence, keeping an open mind, and using scientific knowledge and evidence are crucial skills used by a forensic psychologist. Emotional responses are not helpful in a forensic unit.