Northern Michigan University's Criminal Justice Department and Regional Police Academy recently hosted Alpena Community College (ACC) Director of Criminal Justice Robert Mills. The two schools are firming up a partnership to offer a 3+1 program, in which students would attend ACC for three years before transferring and completing a bachelor's degree at Northern.
“We had a wide-ranging discussion about ways in which we can bring our two curricula in sync with one another for students from ACC wishing to complete a baccalaureate degree with us,” said NMU Criminal Justice Department Head Robert Hanson. “We can offer a seamless transition for that process, and we're a natural fit for ACC because they do not have a police academy. They are also interested in partnering with us to encourage their students to take advantage of the police academy here, which is geared to both our applied associate degree in law enforcement and bachelor's degree.”
Mills said he was told by the previous director at ACC that they had explored a 3+1 agreement with Northern years ago, but it was never completed.
“So I reached out to the articulation agreement folks at NMU, and Tanya Savage [assistant director of Transfer Pathways and Partnerships] put me in touch with Professor Hanson,” Mills added. “He warmly welcomed me to come up and look at his program and to look over the classes that we offer here at Alpena. They also did some paperwork to have the courses that we teach evaluated to see where they fall in the scope of things, and lots of good feedback was given.”
Mills also toured NMU facilities and met with Lt. Kenneth Love of the NMU Regional Police Academy. He reported that shortly after returning to Alpena from his visit, four people approached him saying they wanted to finish their final year in college at NMU to take advantage of the criminal justice program and police academy. He also said one ACC student plans to enroll in NMU Global Campus this fall to complete the bachelor's degree online.
Find more information on NMU's Criminal Justice Department here and NMU Global Campus here.