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Criminal justice and criminology students at Lycoming College enlightened fellow educators and students on transnational crimes at the 30th Pennsylvania Criminal Justice Educators Annual Meeting on April 7. The conference, hosted at Lock Haven University, attracted regional faculty, practitioners, and both graduate and undergraduate students. Four Lycoming students presented secondary research papers to an attentive panel of experts in the criminal justice field and students pursuing careers in criminal justice or criminology.
Students taking a criminal justice course led by Justin Medina, Ph.D., assistant professor of criminal justice at Lycoming College, conducted research for an assigned paper in the fall. The department then selected four students for their thorough research and concise writing. Students’ papers, themed around making sense of international criminal trafficking at the local level, included “Drug Trafficking into the United States,” by Kyle Thomas ’18 (Bel Air, Md.), “Child Trafficking between China and Thailand,” by Kiersten Arnett ’19 (Bradford, Pa.), “The Illicit Market for Trafficked Organs,” by Megan Urbanski ’18 (Nottingham, Md.), and “The Smuggling of Animals,” by Krystle Mummert ’18 (Glenolden, Pa.).
“Presenting at conferences is important for our students because it plugs them into the wider community of scholars and future employers who might find their work interesting and of value,” said Medina. “Typically undergraduates do not participate in conferences in this way, so it helps them stand out to employers and graduate schools looking for distinguished students.”
In the future, Medina intends to offer a comparative criminal justice travel course to Amsterdam and the International Criminal Court at The Hague, the Netherlands, with a goal of enriching students’ understanding of the emerging global justice systems through practical applications and first-hand experiences.