University officials have said the criminology and criminal justice program here is the best there is, and the world, it seems, has begun to take notice.
The Vietnamese government reached out to the State Department late last year in hopes of collaborating with American universities to help improve its criminal justice system — specifically, its police force. Federal officials recommended this university’s top-ranked criminology and criminal justice department, and starting in May, university professors will travel to the People’s Police Academy in Hanoi, Vietnam, to teach a new master’s degree program for criminal justice leadership. University criminology and criminal justice professor Gary LaFree will head the initiative.
“The Vietnamese government seems to be fascinated with improving the quality of their criminal justice system, and Maryland has a reputation of having the number one criminology program in the world, and so they actually reached out to us,” LaFree said.
This university has a history of partnerships with Asian governments and higher education institutions. The criminology and criminal justice department’s first internationally based master’s program was founded in Nanjing, China, at the Nanjing Normal University in 2003. Many suspect the success of that program prompted the State Department to point to this university as an international authority.
“This might be another opportunity for us and the People’s Police Academy to build a collaborative relationship with University of Maryland generally, but with our program and public policy,” said department chairwoman Sally Simpson.
Vietnamese students in the program are already working professionally in law enforcement, but their government feels that their skills need to be honed. A similar professional master’s degree program offered at this university is available to officials in the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI.
“The 40 students currently enrolled are extremely enthusiastic about the program and the opportunity to study with UM faculty in Hanoi and in College Park,” graduate school Dean Charles Caramello wrote in an email yesterday.
The 16-month program will include three courses taught by the People’s Police Academy and six taught by professors from this university. The class in May will be an intensive two-week session because many of the students have full-time positions in the police force.
“It’s a fairly compressed course; in fact, I don’t think I taught this many hours a day before for a graduate course,” LaFree said.
Because students will only have two weeks with LaFree, they were given assignments to complete before he gets there and will have several more due after he leaves. Other university professors are expected to teach in Hanoi in the coming semesters as well, although the department has not released a definitive list yet.
Next summer, the Vietnamese students will spend a month in College Park working on their capstone research projects and then return to Hanoi to receive their degrees.
“The University of Maryland is committed to internationalizing its programs and to preparing graduate students to operate in a global community,” Caramello wrote.
marcot at umdbk dot com
