Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? What are your interests and hobbies?

I was born in Littleton, Colorado, and moved to Michigan around the age of 11. I ended up moving back to Colorado since I loved it so much here. The main hobby that I enjoy doing every weekend is playing ultimate frisbee with a local pick-up group in my area. Along with that I enjoy hiking along the front range and mountain biking during the warmer months. 

You came to CU Denver as a transfer student. Tell us about your decision to attend CU Denver and what experiences led to that decision.

I never did well in my academics in high school. Therefore, I had very little opportunity to make it out to a 4-year university. CU Denver was one of my top options. Being that I was not able to meet the requirements to attend CU Denver, I decided to take a different approach and attend a local community college in my small town. After bolstering my academics at community college, I was able to apply to be a transfer student to CU Denver where Nora Scanlon, my academic advisor, helped me through every step of the way from transferring my credits to providing me guidance with the SPA program.

What influenced you to choose Criminal Justice as your major?

As a little child, I was always intrigued by law enforcement and how the “bad guys” were booked into jail to face justice. My parents have always taught me growing up to be kind and empathetic to everyone I cross paths with. At that point, I made up my mind that I wanted to become a Police Officer. By the time I was in high school, my sister had taken a course at a technical career school in the city where we were living in Michigan. My high school offered juniors and seniors the opportunity to take these courses as dual enrollment. I discovered a Law and Public Safety program that they offered. A couple of my colleagues were in this program and other programs that they offered. They all loved it, and I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to gain more experience in the criminal justice field if I really wanted to pursue a criminal justice major in college. My senior year was a blast in the program and my instructor was a former Michigan State Police Trooper. He provided great insight into his own career and for us, his students' motivation to pursue careers in the criminal justice field. He has since retired from his position, but he has always been a huge motivator for me to pursue my goals in law enforcement and my criminal justice major.

Tell us about a favorite CU Denver class or professor.

I don’t have one class that I have favored over the many others I have taken for my major. However, I would say that my police-community relations class was a subject I enjoyed learning more about considering the climate of law enforcement in today’s society. I also liked learning how community relations were years prior to now and about the different strategies that are being developed/implemented in order to build stronger relationships in the community with law enforcement.

In terms of my favorite professor, hands down would be Professor George Vogler with his experience in law enforcement and the Denver Police Department. He has been a professor that I have looked up to and has provided me with great insight into the different subjects he teaches in his classes at CU Denver. I have taken four different courses with Professor Vogler and each time has always been wonderful. I always took something new away from each lesson he provided that I can take into my future career path in law enforcement. 

You recently interned with the Denver Police Department. Tell us about a highlight from your internship.

Coming into my internship with DPD has been nothing but great. A highlight that I would take away from my internship is the community outreach events that we do. That would be my favorite part of my internship. Learning about police-community relationships and actually seeing it happen firsthand is really something that I take pride in. Without good relationships with the community, we cannot properly mitigate crime and disorder. Along with that, I really enjoyed helping the community resource officers and my supervisor do these types of community outreach events. Being able to help the local community with different issues or inform them about crime prevention topics always leaves me grateful that the Denver Police is working towards building better relationships with their community.

What’s something from your internship that has been surprising?

One thing that surprised me at my internship was the community advisory board meetings. Each time we might have different faces or new questions. In these community advisory board meetings, the purpose of them is to be transparent with the community that the district is serving. Providing community members with a monthly meeting at district headquarters allows them to express issues in their community and to understand what are the current crime trends are in specific regions provided by data from the data analyst. At one of the meetings, we had the entire conference room full of community members and in that very meeting, I saw everyone engaged in issues in the community. More specifically, the trends of juveniles causing problems in the community. Multiple members at the meeting stood up and expressed their anguish about how they wanted to work with Denver Police in order to establish programs for troubled juveniles. I thought it was great to see these types of interactions with the community and the police department because it leads to change in our communities. The commander took note of the comments and stated that they are willing to work with the community on potential solutions to creating more youth programs in the community.

What steps did you take to find and secure your internship?

My advisor mentioned the Denver Police Department VIPS program to me at one of our meetings. I thought to look more deeply into what the program was and how it worked. Being that I really wanted to work with law enforcement in an internship, it was a no-brainer to me to apply for the position as an intern. I used Handshake as a way to find this position and applied through the VIPS website. From there, I went into the hiring process and eventually was hired by my supervisor who is one of the coordinators for the VIPS program at the Denver Police Department.

What advice do you have for future students, especially transfer students?

My advice for future students and transfer students like me is really to not lose sight of the bigger picture. Sometimes life and school can become hard. Many other students deal with stress and fatigue just like I did. But what kept me motivated was the goal at the end of everything. At times I felt like stopping and that I needed a break because some of the courses were really getting to me, but I prevailed. And I wouldn’t take anything back from my journey as it makes me who I am.