Dr. Mark Bond

In 2016, criminal justice studies celebrated the centennial founding of the recognized discipline within higher education. Since the disciplines founding, there has not been a continues educational research focus on instructional best practices within the criminal justice discipline. To help fill this gap in the scholarly literature and identifying best teaching practices and strategies, the focus of my research is on the scholarship of teaching and learning within the criminal justice/criminology discipline. This research effort is combined with twenty years of higher learning criminal justice classroom teaching experience in the traditional, distance, and hybrid educational platforms. An example of this research is applying evidence based educational research theory within the classroom to enhance the instruction of information literacy skills with first-year college students. Previous research into this focus area includes evaluation of educational technology to enhance transfer of new knowledge, applying andragogy theory to build professor/student relationships, effective cooperative learning theory strategies, applying experiential learning theory to instructional methods within criminal justice studies, best practices on instructional methods to help students build a personal learning network (PLN), teaching plagiarism awareness and avoidance strategies, and student-centered learning strategies that enhance student critical thinking skills, academic success, and student retention. This research has led to authoring of several articles currently under review for publishing in peer-reviewed journals. In addition, the educational research focus on criminal justice studies has led to current presenting opportunities at local and national instructional/educational conferences. Dr. Bond is presently engaged in educational research focused on instructors' experiences, perceptions, and teaching strategies related to application of institutional policies in teaching practices that affect student retention, and plans to submit research findings for publishing in peer-reviewed journals and presentation opportunities at educational conference over the next several years.