Criminal Justice Center Welcomes Koreans

A delegation of Korean correctional officials recently visited the SHSU Criminal Justice Center.

Special guests from the university included James Gaertner, president; David Payne, vice president for academic affairs; Jurg Gerber, director of international programs; Richard Ward, dean of the college of criminal justice; and W. Wesley Johnson, associate dean of the college of criminal justice.

Guests from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice were Gary Johnson, executive director; Ed Owens, assistant executive director; and Dee Kifowit, director of the Texas Council on Offenders with Mental Impairment.

The university has recently entered into cooperative relationships with the Korean Ministry of Justice, the Korean Institute of Criminology, and several other universities with criminal justice education programs.

During the past several months the Criminal Justice Center's Correctional Management Institute of Texas, under the direction of Dan Beto, has hosted several Korean correctional officials including Soo-Myung Chin of the Korean Institute of Criminology; Jae-Jun Jeong of the Bureau of Juvenile Justice; Nam-Sik Hong and Yong-Ju Sohn with the Correctional Bureau; and Young-jae Lee, a probation director with the Social Protection and Rehabilitation Bureau.

According to Won-jae Lee, one of the SHSU criminal justice doctoral students from Korea who attended the ceremony, "All the Korean officers were deeply impressed by the best example of how SHSU as academia and TDCJ as practitioners are working together for the betterment of the U.S. criminal justice system."

- END -

SHSU Media Contact: Julia May
October 29, 2002
Please send comments, corrections, news tips to Today@Sam.edu