Contact Information

R. Bruce McBride
Director, Criminal Justice Program

Criminal Justice



Criminal Justice Home

Utica College's criminal justice major is an interdisciplinary program which excels in addressing the needs of contemporary practitioners, providing firm foundations in criminal justice, law, sociology, psychology, political science, forensics, and communication. A theory-into-practice formula is applied to the curriculum, which allows students increasing involvement in theory, research, and practice culminating in the capstone course, a semester-long internship. The program is further strengthened by incorporating an international component in its curriculum, important in the preparation of future leaders.


Special Opportunities


UC's criminal justice internship program enjoys a national reputation in both the academic and professional communities. Internship opportunities are semester-long and full time. The student fully participates in the operations of CJ agencies and related organizations, and CJ faculty members visit students on site during the internship, regardless of the distance from campus. Internship opportunities exist nationwide in both public and private sectors and, depending on scholastic average, international sites may be approved.

Because of their reputation for being well trained in research and analytical methods, and in computer applications, the College's CJ majors have been recruited by local and state government agencies to undertake serious research projects. Under faculty direction, these may become class projects, individual projects, or independent studies, all of which contribute to students' learning and reinforce the theory-into-practice curriculum design.

Facilities


Special CJ program facilities include a dedicated computer cluster established as a major component of the criminal justice-economic crime investigation program. These computers are utilized to train all CJ students in the use of computers as investigative research tools. A federal funded computer forensic lab, establish this year, enabled the faculty and students to engage in the study of cutting edge crimes and their control. Another unique resource exists in the continuing arrangement established with the nearby New York State Supreme Court Law Library. Here CJ and pre-law students are trained in legal research methods.

Faculty


The CJ faculty manifests the interdisciplinary nature of the curriculum. With a focus on teaching undergraduates the faculty are selected based on credentials, professional experience, and prior records of excellence in teaching. In addition, faculty members are able to draw upon their previous CJ experience and relationships established with agencies in the CJ field to help students with career counseling and to establish internships that provide students with hands-on experience.

Kyung-Seok Choo
, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of criminal justice and ECM graduate program. As a member of the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Science, he presented various research papers for the last couple of years. Professor Choo offers undergraduate courses such as research methods, criminology, organized crime, and comparative criminal justice. At the graduate level, he teaches the course "research and analytical methods in fraud management." He earned a Master of Science degree from the college of criminal justice at Northeastern University and completed his Ph.D. dissertation at the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University.

George E. Curtis
, J.D. is an associate professor and the director of economic crime programs. Dr. Curtis currently teaches undergraduate courses on law of economic crime and senior seminar, and is the supervising faculty member for Economic Crime Investigation Internships. He is a member of the New York State Bar and the Oneida Country Bar Association, has served as the President of the Oneida County Bar Association, and is a member of its board of directors. Dr. Curtis is the faculty advisor for the Criminal Justice Honor Society, Alpha Phi Sigma, and the Economic Crime Investigation Student Association. He is currently developing an online Journal of Economic Crime and Fraud Management and conducts research in the areas of law, cyber crime, and computer forensics.

R. Bruce McBride
, Ed.D, is Associate Professor and Director of Criminal Justice at Utica College. He teaches courses in the general curriculum, which includes Introduction to Criminal Justice and Senior Seminar. He also directs the Criminal Justice Internship Program, which allows senior students to gain firsthand knowledge of criminal justice operations in an agency setting. Elective courses that he offers include American Policing, Administrative Issues and special topical courses on terrorism and emergency management.

A former police officer and investigator, Dr. McBride taught at the State University of New York Institute of Technology at Utica/Rome from 1977 to 1985 and at Utica College from 1985 to 1987. He left the program to assume duties as Assistant Vice Chancellor for University Police for the State University of New York where he coordinated law enforcement operations for the systems 64 campuses. He returned to resume his teaching duties at the college in Spring 2001.

He is currently advising the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators with their executive development-training program and a nation-wide training program on weapons of mass destruction. He is co-author of Proactive Police Management (Prentice-Hall) and Criminal Justice Internships with Dr. Gary Gordon (Anderson).

Dr. McBride received bachelors and masters degrees in history from the State University College at Oswego and masters and doctorate degrees in administration and policy studies from the University at Albany. In Fall 2002, he received the Richard Lewis Award by the Criminal Justice Educators Association of New York State for his work on criminal justice education and public policy.

Theodore S. Orlin
, J.D., a Fulbright Scholar and member of the New York State Bar, is an internationally recognized expert on human rights, working throughout Eastern Europe with a variety of international non-governmental agencies. Dr. Orlin is the College's pre-law adviser and teaches political science. He also led the development of the human rights studies program at UC. He has an extensive research and publication record in human rights, civil rights, and Constitutional law, and is a recipient of the College's prestigious Distinguished Teaching Award.

Donald J. Rebovich
, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Economic Crime Program at Utica College. At Utica College, he is a research associate in the Computer Forensics Research and Development Center. Before coming to Utica College, Dr. Rebovich served as research director for the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) and the American Prosecutors Research Institute (APRI). For NW3C, Dr. Rebovich was responsible for directing the analysis of Internet crime report data generated by the FBI's Internet Fraud Complaint Center and directing the National Public Survey on White Collar Crime. He is the author of Dangerous Ground: The World of Hazardous Waste Crime, which presented the results of the first empirical study of environmental crime and its control in the United States. His background also includes research in economic crime victimization, white collar crime prosecution and multi-jurisdictional task force development. Dr. Rebovich has served as advisor to the U.S. Department of Justice on tribal technology and information sharing, and on environmental crime control. Dr. Rebovich obtained his B.S. degree in Psychology from the College of New Jersey and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Rutgers University.

Divya Sharma
, Ph.D. (Sociology), ABD (Criminal Justice), is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice. Professor Sharma's research interests include organized crime, terrorism and money laundering; ethnicity, identity and multi-culturalism. At the undergraduate level she teaches courses in organized crime, criminology and research methods. While working on her second Ph.D., Professor Sharma is gradually "deviating" into visual criminology and cultural communication in global context.
Professor Sharma's Faculty Web Page

Career Options


Opportunities exist in federal, state, and local police agencies and as investigators on the staff of district attorneys or public defenders. UC graduates work for adult and juvenile probation services, in delinquency prevention programs, as counselors for drug and alcohol programs, and in alternatives to incarceration-diversion programs.

UC graduates find employment in juvenile and adult corrections and parole services, in court administration, and in court-directed mediation services. From each graduating class, several students enter law or graduate school, while a significant number enter the CJ field for experience and return to graduate or professional school after a few years. A number of private companies have employed CJ graduates as investigators or analysts.

Further Information


Contact R. Bruce McBride, Director, Criminal Justice Program. rmcbride@utica.edu.