Starting fall term 2024, the School of Public Policy (SPP) in the College of Liberal Arts will begin to offer all on campus and Ecampus undergraduate students the opportunity to add criminology as a minor to their degree program.
As a discipline, criminology is a social and behavioral science focusing on human behavioral patterns and motivations concerning crime. The criminology curriculum in SPP will provide students the ability to apply social science concepts and theories of crime to better understand and analyze relationships between crime, justice, and public policy. It is heavily grounded in criminological theory and current research..
Brett Burkhardt, associate professor of sociology, is one of four, core, full-time faculty members who will be co-leading the minor.
“Students minoring in criminology will receive new insight into criminal activity, as well as the institutions and laws that respond to criminal behavior, ” said Burkhardt.
The minor degree will require three core courses, Introduction to Crime and Justice (SOC 241), Deviant Behavior and Social Control (SOC 340) and Criminology and Penology (SOC 441), as well as offer a dozen other elective courses, including Inside Out: Prisons, Communities, and Prevention (SOC 444), where students learn alongside incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals.
The minor is available to undergraduate students majoring in any discipline, setting themselves up for graduate school or careers in law enforcement, government, forensic psychology, or victim advocacy. For students majoring in sociology, the crime and justice option will still be offered and can be taken concurrently with the criminology minor.
“In addition to becoming well-rounded criminologists,” Burkhardt elaborated. “I hope that students come away as informed and critical consumers of news about crime, to ask informed questions, be skeptical, and know how to find accurate information related to criminal activity.”
For more information on the criminology minor, please contact Jennifer Edwards, advisors for the School of Public Policy.