This course will explore the different types of trauma, its impact on communities, families, and special populations such as children, transition age youth and criminal justice. Students will gain knowledge on how to beceom a trauma informed care champion as well as learn about evidence based models and community/natural resources that support victims of trauma.

This course examines adolescents struggling with addictions from a biopsychosocial perspective. This serves as the theoretical framework for understanding challenges and various interventions to facilitate recovery. Social institutions that influence the adolescent such as the family, the courts, and education will be dissected and we will explore various treatment issues and recovery models. Socioeconomic factors will also be analyzed.

A broad overview of the operations of the administration of justice and a description of the criminal justice system from arrest to parole, examining the issue of crime and focusing on the specific agencies and actors who constitute the system of criminal justice – police, courts, and correctional agencies.

Therapeutic work with clients dealing with grief and loss will be viewed within a developmental framework for different age groups. Students will learn how grief is influenced by biological, psychological and sociological responses to grief. Topics include ambiguous loss, disenfranchised loss, and spiritual losses in the mourning stages. Developmental issues, coping mechanisms, and identification of poor coping skills and risky behavior during grief and loss stages for each age group will be addressed.

This course contains an in-depth study of the systematic social inequality in the access of opportunities, resources, and rewards. The focus is on social stratification in the United States with some comparisons to other industrialized nations. A historical structure of how stratification has varied throughout history will be included, as well as the consequences of the future of a stratified world.

A study of the history and values underlying American responses to human needs. Emphasis on the individual’s rights to services and the dilemmas that now confront American social policy.

Addresses social concerns experienced in the work environment with emphasis on using the sociological perspective to find solutions to these concerns. (Also offered in accelerated format)

The epidemic of high technology crime in America will be examined in regard to the criminal’s methods and motives and the social, economic, legal and technological factors that have facilitated the prevalence of these crimes in the U.S. Specific investigative and prosecution hurdles experienced by the criminal justice system will be explored and the solutions offered will be addressed and analyzed.

An overview of sentencing, punishment, and treatment of convicted offenders. Analysis of the history of the correctional system, the prison social system and the theory and contemporary practices and trending issues in the area of corrections.

Adolescence is explained from a biopsychosocial perspective. This theoretical framework serves as a foundation for applying various intervention strategies to facilitate growth. Social institutions that influence American adolescents are examined as are factors of ethnicity, mental health and cultural diversity.