Maria Diaz Mize is Dominican-American and has lived in New York City, Ohio, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Maria is currently on her fourth year of working for City and County of Denver as a Pretrial Services Officer and is getting ready to pursue a doctoral degree in Criminology at Florida State University.
The Master of Criminal Justice (MCJ) program at the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs is ranked among the top 20 programs in the nation according to U.S. News & World Report’s Best Online Master’s in Criminal Justice Programs rankings for 2024.
Joel Gunn is a Deputy Coroner and Coroner Investigator for the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office in Golden, Colorado and has held this position for for the past three-and-a-half years. Prior to working for Jefferson County, he was a Deputy Coroner for the Douglas County Coroner’s Office in Castle Rock.
Naureen Singh is a Youth Support and Development Specialist at the Asian Pacific Development Center and the Policy Director of Colorado Sikhs. Naureen has also earned her commission and currently works on addressing claims of unlawful discrimination and sexual harassment in the United States Air Force. She graduated with her Master of Criminal Justice degree from the University of Colorado Denver. Singh has extensive professional experience with grassroots organizing, interfaith coalition building, and community building. Recently, she has been selected to lead the Colorado Sikh History Project.
Carol was raised in a military family - spending formative years moving between England, Arizona, Mississippi, Turkey, New Jersey, Hawaii, and then Missouri - where her family has its roots. Her educational and career path wandered as well, from a degree in Antiquities and New World Archeology that led from “shovel bum” to managing a bookstore, to undergraduate and graduate degrees in English that led to teaching in Montana, a Native American village in Alaska, and international schools in Pakistan and the Czech Republic. The move to Colorado from Prague was a turning point in Carol’s life, followed by walking into a prison classroom as a GED teacher. Twenty-four years later, Carol’s work remains related to that first prison experience. Carol credits her SPA education for providing her with a public policy lens for her work in re-entry and its role in the public safety sphere.
The new Center for Community Safety and Resilience (CCSR), housed at the School of Public Affairs at CU Denver, hosted an event to disseminate the findings of a recently produced report on crime rates in Colorado from 2010 to 2021. The report co-authors are School of Public Affairs faculty Professor and CU Regent Callie Rennison and Dr. Sheila Huss, clinical assistant professor and interim co-director of the CCSR.