John Jay President Out To Transform College; Focus on Liberal Arts
By DAVID SIMS
Jeremy Travis, President of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told the Women's City Club of New York Sept. 11 that his plan to turn what has long been a school focused on law-enforcement into a leading liberal arts college in the city, features the phasing out of associate degree programs and a massive influx of new professors being hired to deal with a student body that will soon be 100 percent baccalaureate students.

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang STRIKING WHILE THE SCHOOL IS HOT: John Jay College President Jeremy Travis describes his efforts to remake the school from a two-year institution geared to those pursuing law-enforcement careers into 'a top-tier college' with an emphasis on a liberal arts curriculum.

Mr. Travis, who has been President of the college since 2004, was previously director of the National Institute of Justice and is noted for his expertise on criminal justice and especially prisoner issues in the United States. At John Jay, however, he has emerged as a reformer, with the student body swelling to more than 14,000 undergraduates and an increased focus on the liberal arts and on bachelor's degrees.

'Changing School's Flavor'

"It's a few too many [students] for my taste," admitted Mr. Travis in his speech. "But we're a hot school ... we're starting to change the flavor of John Jay." He said that he wanted to continue to transform John Jay into a "senior institution ... a top-tier college," while also addressing "other opportunities for associate degree students," who will likely have their degree programs dispersed among other City University of New York institutions as John Jay shifts its focus.

"We're halfway through a four-year plan to phase out associate degree programs and create a network of associate programs ... in each of six community colleges at CUNY," he explained. "Over the next three or four years, it'll be a very different picture. John Jay will only have baccalaureate students ... it'll be an expanded educational opportunity for New York kids by thousands of seats, by leveraging the capacity of community colleges."

Mr. Travis had high praise for the school's instructional staff, which is growing exponentially as the school's profile rises. "We have a spectacular faculty. We're a public institution, we don't have an endowment, we struggle, we all know the budget realities, and it's never easy ... and what makes the faculty spectacular is that they are committed to the mission of this college," he said.

A Larger, Younger Staff

"We're playing catch-up," he admitted, in reference to the college's growing numbers. "This year, we welcomed 38 new full-time faculty. We have expanded the number of full-time faculty by 25 percent ... all of the full-time faculty who are on board, 35 percent of them were hired in the last four years ... recently credentialed scholars." He emphasized the youth of many of the college's academics, saying, "This is the future of the college."

The change in John Jay has been remarkably swift, especially considering its founding as the College of Police Science (COPS) in 1964, when lectures were held in the Police Academy and the student body was "virtually all white men," according to Mr. Travis. The students of John Jay are now 60 percent female, 45 percent Hispanic and 25 percent African-American, a group that Mr. Travis says reflects on the "New York City immigrant tradition," and who "embrace the [school's] motto of shaping public policy."

In a nod to the date, Mr. Travis mentioned the 68 members of John Jay (alumni, faculty, and students) who died in the World Trade Center attacks seven years earlier, the greatest number for any higher education institution in the city. "We tried to translate that loss and that horror and that tragedy into other things," he said.

From 9/11 to Katrina

The school has programs that focus specifically on issues connected to 9/11, including the just-launched Christian Regenhard Center for Emergency Response Studies, an academic center in the school that studies large-scale attacks and disasters to analyze the effectiveness of first-response work. The center is named after Christian Regenhard, a Probationary Firefighter who died on 9/11 and whose mother Sally founded the Skyscraper Safety Campaign after his death.

"[We're] listening to tapes of people who called 911 on 9/11 ... this is a scholarly activity. We also are looking at Hurricane Katrina ... this is not just about 9/11," said Mr. Travis. "The center is the latest effort ... to create a capacity about how we think about these events."

Gloria Browne-Marshall, an Associate Professor at the school for more than six years, said that she was supportive of John Jay's expanded focus on the liberal arts. "I was attracted to John Jay because it is a liberal arts school," she said, "so the idea that we're focusing on making sure other people know that is a great thing."

She added that the student expansion at the school had "been a trend even prior to [Mr. Travis's] arrival," and that her class had as many as 30 students five years ago. In terms of the phasing out of associate degree programs, she said she hoped it would be beneficial for the CUNY student body. "I want what's best for the students ... so I'm looking forward to seeing how this bridge between the CCs and the four-year colleges such as John Jay works in real terms," she said.