Professor Peter Jones (Ph.D., Geography, Aberystwyth University) who joined the faculty in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University in 1985, will formally retire this summer after a truly impressive 40-year career at Temple. As part of the transitional retirement program, Peter taught his last class this fall and will be off campus this spring.
Peter has provided high-quality education to students in the department in his time here. Among his courses, he taught Introduction to Criminal Justice, Criminal Courts, Research Methods in Criminal Justice, Introduction to Law Enforcement, and Urban Crime Patterns at the undergraduate level. At the graduate level, he helped to teach graduate research methods and survey research and measurement courses. He has also taught statistics, criminal courts, and a teaching seminar at the graduate level. He has had a profound effect on his students over the years; indeed, Peter is a recipient of Temple’s extremely prestigious Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching that recognizes faculty who epitomize the highest levels of sustained teaching excellence.
From the 1980s through the early 2000s, Peter received many large grants as co-PI/PI/Director from various agencies including Philadelphia Department of Human Services, Crime and Justice Research Institute, Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, and Bureau of Justice Assistance, among others. His collective research expenditures over the years are well into the millions, and his extensive grant work has resulted in more than 100 research reports and non-peer reviewed manuscripts! Peter has published more than four-dozen peer-reviewed journal articles in outlets such as Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Criminology and Public Policy, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of Criminal Justice, and Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, among others. Further, he published about a dozen book chapters and has co-authored a book.
Lastly, Peter been instrumental in ensuring quality undergraduate educational experiences in his time as (Acting/Vice/Senior Vice) Provost for Undergraduate Studies, from 2004 to 2017. Some examples of these varied and impactful initiatives include the Student Feedback Forms Data System, helping to develop the Accelerated MA (4+1) programs at Temple, introduced the CARAS program, developed living-learning communities in residence halls, and directed the creation of the Temple Student Success Center, just to name a few. These are not simply good sounding initiatives on paper, these are truly transformative initiatives that have in practice made Temple a better place to study and work.