By Josh Holderbaum
Western Herald
Western Michigan University is expanding both its graduate program and international relations with a recent pact signed with the University of Malta to offer a collaborative master’s degree program in Criminology, Law and Public Policy.
“The collaboration with the University of Malta has developed for a few reasons,” said Gregory Howard, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Graduate Studies.
“First, both WMU and the University of Malta have long standing commitments to international engagement. Second, the University of Malta’s location in the Mediterranean makes it well suited for comparative studies of crime and social control. Third, because English is an official language of Malta given its history as a colony of Great Britain, language does not raise difficulties for collaboration as would be the case in other Mediterranean and European nations.”
The University was founded in 1592 by Jesuit priests in Tal-Qroqq, a district in the port town Msida. Malta is a small island off the coast of Sicily in the heart of the Mediterranean.
Currently, the University has around 10,000 students, 750 of which are foreign or exchange students from 70 different nations, according to the University of Malta’s Web site, www.um.edu.mt.
The framework for the partnership began during a February 2007 conference that Howard and Ashlyn Kuersten, Ph.D., WMU Associate Professor of Political Science, attended at the University of Malta.
Howard and Kuersten learned about the university’s collaborative programs with San Diego State University on integrated marketing communication and with James Madison University in Virginia on sustainable environmental management.
Howard, Kuersten, and other professors at the conference worked with Maltese faculty to design programs for universities around the world and presented their work to University of Malta Rector Juanito Camilleri, who approved of the idea.
“The Rector insisted, however, that the master’s program in criminology would only be viable if it involved a partnership between the University of Malta and an American University,” Howard said.
“Such a collaboration, the Rector reasoned, would provide graduates with a degree that has value in both North America as well as the European Union.”
The partnership was approved by WMU’s Board of Trustees in April and President John Dunn signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Rector Camilleri on May 5.
According to Howard, universities are in the final stages of the accreditation process. The program’s first students should be able to register by Fall 2010.
Howard believes the program will greatly benefit WMU students.
“Most directly, WMU students will soon have access to graduate level training in criminology at one of Europe’s oldest universities from a collection of internationally recognized scholars,” Howard said.
“WMU currently does not offer a master’s degree in criminology, so the new program will offer students more choices in terms of their course of study.”
“Because the new criminology program will be delivered as intensive “modules” of some two week’s duration that follow one another in a prescribed order, WMU students who are not formally admitted to the criminology program may nonetheless take a module or two, depending upon their interests, and transfer the credits into their graduate program at WMU.”
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