Our Story
"Empowering law enforcement professionals to achieve educational excellence"
Origins
Every few months, I get a call from a law enforcement professional wrestling with graduate school. Some are trying to figure out where to apply or how to sell themselves to admissions. Others are in programs, have good dissertation questions, but are struggling to find and analyze data. Others are nearly done, but not sure if their work is as good as it should be.
All have been smart, hard-working, and pursuing a degree for the right reason--hoping education would help them better protect their communities.
However, each has had the same fundamental problem: An unlevel playing field...
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The Problem
The problem is, they are not just working professionals – they are first responders. Their colleagues, neighbors, and communities need them now. They cannot take a week off work, much less a semester, to focus on school. So, instead, they pour themselves into the Job, and squeeze in education where they can. They often struggle as a result. Not through lack of intelligence, or potential, or care – they often have more of these qualities than typical graduate students. Rather, because they are fighting through an unlevel playing field with respect to schedules, access to top tier schools (lacking flexible schedules), and lower investment by faculty.
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The biggest problem for the sworn is this: Doing graduate school between arrests, meetings with informants, rushing to a hospital, waiting in court, or working a double on the cell block because the next shift was short and you (literally) cannot leave. You might miss class. You might miss meetings with your dissertation chair. Professors may assume you're less capable or motivated than other students because of challenges making it to classes or ability to help out in a research lab. And then invest less in you, offer less technical assistance, and less care in your success.
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A related problem is this: It makes graduate school more expensive – the challenges of pursuing education in this context can make school drag on for years. That means delays in work-promotions that may have resulted from new degrees, lost years of good work that could have been done as an applied scientist post-graduation, and of course the extra tuition.
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The Sworn Scholars Project is dedicated to helping law enforcement professionals not only earn their degree but thrive in the role of law enforcement scholar.
How We Help
The Sworn Scholars Project provides coaching, brainstorming, review, and/or technical feedback on any aspect of the dissertation, master’s thesis, or research project for law enforcement professionals. Want help cleaning data or checking code? Great. Need to talk through statistical strategies and plans for presenting results? No problem. If you need a full and critical read of a complete dissertation and get feedback on writing, substance, strategy, interpretation, code, and planning for a defense – reach out.
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​Providing quality help requires real time and effort – time taken away from my day job and family. And so, the service is not free. The charge is similar to other dissertation-coaching companies. The differences is:
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Care. Providing help with passion for your success and an eye for bringing out the value your law enforcement experience brings to scholarship.
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Experience. Few people do both academic and law enforcement work professionally, and the few who do...are usually only good at one or the other. I've put tremendous effort into both dimensions of my work -- contributing in one of the top law enforcement agencies in the nation, earning a PhD from the nation's highest ranked doctoral program in my field, and publishing dozens of papers in top tier journals along the way.
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It would be wonderful, but not possible, to run this as a charity. Except in one case:
Children or spouses of police or correctional officers killed in action are free.
What is NOT provided
Many companies offer ghost writing of educational documents (e.g., they'll find and clean your data; they'll do your analysis and write up your results; they'll write your conclusions section).
The Sworn Scholars Project does NOT do your work for you. You may get suggested language to illustrate an in-text comment, you may get explicit guidance on how to write your code better or more accurate statistical approaches to take. We can get on the phone and I'll explain those methods to you. But you must be the person to consider whether you agree. And, if so, implement them on your own with complete competence and understanding.
By way of analogy, think of defensive tactics or firearm training.
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An expert instructor will ensure your stance, aim, and strategy is sound. They will look for the smallest mistakes and correct them. But they will never, ever fire the gun for you. You need that skill to save the lives of your colleagues, the community, and yourself.
Graduate degrees are not mere letters. The quality of your graduate education will have as much, and probably more, impact on public safety than your skill with a firearm. ​