The primary objectives of this REU program are to provide participants with a highly supportive and rigorous mentoring experience in which they will learn about and actively engage with the various components of the research process. Through this opportunity, students will better understand the ways in which community-level crime and criminal justice research can help guide policy responses and reform initiatives. The C3JD program will prioritize the following goals:
• Recruiting a diverse pool of underrepresented undergraduate students, particularly racial/ethnic minorities, women, and first-generation college students, for an intensive research experience
• Providing selected students significant mentorship from faculty who have demonstrated meaningful commitments to both mentorship and undergraduate research during their academic careers
• Developing selected students’ understanding of the research process by providing them access to a) substantive and methodological workshops of relevance to the study of communities, crime, and criminal justice and b) discussions with criminal justice professionals doing practical work in the area of communities, crime, and criminal justice
• Providing students with guidance on the various mechanisms and pathways involved in the dissemination of research findings, while also having them participate in a research symposium at the end of the program for which we will invite faculty from other programs and local criminal justice professionals to attend
• Preparing selected students for entrance into competitive graduate programs with concentrations in criminology, criminal justice, or related social sciences