The School of Professional and Continuing Studies (SPCS)—formerly University College—will expand its scope by offering two new programs in conjunction with the university’s day colleges.
Working with the College of Criminal Justice and Bouvé College of Health Sciences, SPCS will create new programs aimed at professionals in criminology and health care.

The moves are part of the part-time program’s broad efforts to reposition itself and recapture market share that has drifted away over the years, according to Christopher Hopey, vice president for adult and continuing education.
Changing the school’s name, for example, is aimed at “better representing the breadth and depth of what we do,” Hopey says.

One new program, offered in conjunction with criminal justice, will, starting in fall 2005, offer further training to midcareer police officers. The Executive and Professional Development Program in Criminal Justice, focusing in part on homeland security, will be headed by James Jordan, former chief of strategic planning for the Boston Police.

In June, Jordan told several dozen New England police chiefs—gathered at the Sheraton Hotel in Needham, Massachusetts, to hear the announcement of the program—that the courses will develop “the next generation of police leaders.”

Working with Bouvé, SPCS will also offer a leadership program called the Bouvé Institute for Leadership in Healthcare and Professional Development, to be led by Lea Johnson, assistant dean of nursing.

Northeastern has had a continuing-education arm for the past forty-three years. Traditionally, the university’s continuing-education effort has relied heavily on faculty from the day colleges, supplemented by adjunct teachers. Currently, all SPCS academic programs must still be approved by the appropriate department or college before gaining final approval by the university’s governing bodies.

But Hopey hopes to institute a new governing structure that can approve new academic ventures at SPCS, allowing the school to adapt more quickly to marketplace changes and have better oversight over its programs, and giving a more direct voice to the school’s students and faculty.
Hopey plans other changes as well.

He opened a new Office of Enrollment Services to provide more support for transfer students and adults re-entering the academic world. Other improvements include:
• The institution of “cohort programs,” in which groups of students enter together, take the same set of courses, work together in groups, and graduate together.
• A new structuring that tightens the current “open enrollment” arrangement, which allows students to drift in and out of programs.
• A summer school geared toward undergraduates and high school students, with a residential component.
• Expanded Internet-based distance learning.

In related news, the Board of Trustees has approved four new degree programs: a master’s in information assurance, offered through the College of Computer and Information Science; and doctoral programs in physical therapy and audiology, and a bachelor’s in health sciences, all offered through Bouvé College.

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