A Criminal Justice PhD Program Student Association through the Graduate Center at The City University of New York. Our committee and meetings are most often housed at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
The Criminal Justice Doctoral Students’ Association (CJDSA) was founded in 2011, by and for the students of CUNY’s PhD program in Criminal Justice. The Association is the focal point of a cohesive student community, and represents student interests across all aspects of our roles as researchers, teachers, and professionals. Students in the Criminal Justice Doctoral Program stand at the intersection of many institutions with divergent agendas, from the administrations of John Jay College, the CUNY Graduate Center, and the City University of New York as a whole, to our union (the Professional Staff Congress), the Doctoral Students’ Council, and many others. The CJDSA was founded to manage student relationships with all of these bodies, and to advocate for the interests of individual students and the Criminal Justice Doctoral Program as a whole, in all of the many arenas where decisions are taken that affect aspects of our educational experience.
We hope to serve as a comprehensive source of information for and about our students, and to help make our fellow students’ post-graduate education everything it should be.
The purposes of the CJDSA Board shall include but not be limited to:
1. Promoting an atmosphere of community and sociability for the welfare of students in the Criminal Justice Doctoral Program;
2. Representing the interests of and establishing and enacting policy for students in the Criminal Justice Doctoral Program;
3. Ensuring student representation on all Criminal Justice Doctoral Program standing committees and Graduate Council and hearing reports of those student representatives;
4. Facilitating professional development of Criminal Justice doctoral students by providing necessary resources and support and fostering connections with program alumni; and
5. Undertaking other initiatives as needed and as decided by the students to improve any aspect of the program in which students have a rightful role.
