Students in Pellissippi State Community College’s Criminal Justice program this semester have a unique opportunity to learn from someone who has practiced it to the utmost degree every single day for more than three decades: Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen.

Allen, district attorney general of the 6th Judicial District, has been on the Criminal Justice Advisory Board at Pellissippi State for several years and has hired many students from the program as interns in her office. Teaching criminal law at the college’s Magnolia Avenue campus was a natural next step in her partnership with Pellissippi.

“It’s just been a wonderful win-win for both the school and my office – for the system,” Allen said. “It really is helping this next generation of criminal justice professionals have a degree of experience – and real-world, hands-on experience – that they may not have gotten.”

Guest instructors like Allen align with Pellissippi’s new five-year strategic plan, and its goal of becoming a “career immersion college,” Trogdon said. Allen joins a faculty also comprised of former correctional and probation officers, federal employees, and detectives.

Allen’s knowledge of the criminal justice system is invaluable and shows students “how everything works behind the scenes,” Trogdon said.

Allen found that students were surprisingly eager to learn the basics of criminal law, which she had worried they would perceive as dry.

“They are just like sponges,” Allen said. “They find everything exciting. And I have to remember, I’ve been doing this for 35 years, so a little bit of the first new excitement has worn off – but, boy, not to these students. They are interested in every single topic we cover. They are on fire to learn this.”

Many of them, Allen noted, are already in the criminal-justice field – as cadets with the Knoxville Police Department, at the Family Justice Center or in other ways.

“These are students that are not only learning criminal law, but they’re actually living the criminal law,” Allen said. “They find it extremely interesting. They ask great questions. We have wonderful discussions.”

Criminal Justice student Kaelynn Tucker is working with an assistant district attorney and victim-witness coordinator to learn more about the domestic violence cases they have seen in the courts.

“It’s just a whole different ball game when you can be in the system and see how things are running,” Tucker said.

“It’s actually changed my point of view on where I want to be in the criminal justice profession,” Tucker said. “Being in her criminal law class, I have decided myself that I want to try and work alongside of her and work in the court system.”

In addition to interacting with practitioners in the field, the students have visited the courthouse to sit in on trials where they are watching, learning, asking great questions and taking their assignments very seriously, Allen said.

Students are “getting real-world experience, and that’s so critically important, because these students are the future,” Allen said. They “will be in the real world, doing exactly what the professionals that we are pairing them with are doing, in a few years.”

Pellissippi Associate Professor in Criminal Justice Joe Schmitz, a former law enforcement officer, has interacted with prosecutors and defense attorneys in all aspects of the criminal justice system and values those who have a passion for their work.

“Having Charme Allen as part of our Criminal Justice faculty is nothing short of amazing,” he said. “One of my goals when I came to Pellissippi was to have a diverse program of careers, so that students could get a well-rounded experience. They absolutely adore General Allen.”

Read the full article here.

Pellissippi State Community College is a public community college based in Knox and Blount counties in Tennessee and operated by the Tennessee Board of Regents. The college operates four campuses: Hardin Valley, Blount County, Strawberry Plains, and Magnolia Avenue.

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