A Bachelor of Arts degree is offered in criminal justice. The Criminal Justice program is designed to provide a liberal arts education for students interested in employment or graduate education in criminal justice and related areas, for example, counseling and social work.
Criminal justice students participate in the planned sequence of the liberal arts core to prepare them with an understanding of the moral, philosophical, historical and scientific base from which to understand and make decisions and judgments when presented with criminal justice topics. The program in criminal justice provides basic preparation that relates the criminal justice area to liberal arts education and forms a foundation for employment opportunities in such fields as policing, corrections, probation and for graduate studies.
Admission
Students intending to enter the program as majors must formally apply for admission. Prerequisites for admission are:
- Completion of 6 hours of coursework in criminal justice.
- Overall GPA of at least 2.0 as well as 2.50 in criminal justice courses.
Graduation with a major in criminal justice requires completion of at least 21 credits in the major at Saint Xavier University.
Requirements
The criminal justice major requires a minimum of 36 credit hours, including:
Core Criminal Justice Requirements
- CJ 101: Introduction to the Criminal Justice System (3)
- CJ 201: Law Enforcement and Society (3)
- CJ 202: Corrections (3)
- CJ 214: Law, Courts and Justice (3)
- CJ 294: Research Methods and Design (3)
- CJ 312: Criminology (3)
- CJ 316: Victimology (3)
- CJ 368: CJ Senior Seminar (3)
- Four Criminal Justice Electives (12)
Two of the four CJ electives must be 300-level courses.
CJ 312, CJ 294, CJ 368 and six additional credit hours in criminal justice must be taken at Saint Xavier University. A grade of C or better is required for the core courses in the major of criminal justice.
Students must complete MATH 135: Introduction to Statistics (or other statistics course, per director approval) for a statistics element of their Criminal Justice degree. It is strongly encouraged that students complete MATH 135 as their General Education college-level math requirement.
To qualify for CJ 368: Senior Seminar, students must have completed MATH 135 and CJ 294 with a C or better.
Criminal Justice Elective Courses
Students are offered a wide range of elective courses to supplement the core requirements. Students are encouraged to work with their faculty advisors to select elective courses that reflect their general interests and career goals. These electives can be found under the course descriptions section of the catalog.