The overwhelming majority of our fellows come to teach during
the summer sessions; however, this year we were fortunate to have
a Minority Faculty Fellow during the fall and spring semesters as
well. David Canales-Portalatín taught two courses in each semester
of his appointment with the Criminal Justice Department and worked
on an impressive array of additional projects during his stay at
I.U.
The courses, entitled "The Family and Formal Control Systems in America," and "Ethics in Criminal Justice Administration and Research," attracted both graduate and undergraduate students, and covered material specifically within Dr. Canales-Portalatín's specialty. He considered this a great professional opportunity, remarking that "the opportunity to teach about domestic violence in a comprehensive way instead of just looking at the nitty gritty research we look at larger dynamics it was a very good experience." Not content to cultivate a "professor in the ivory tower" existence, Dr. Canales-Portalatín brought speakers from around the community in to speak to his students, and he himself ventured out into the community to conduct his own interviews, studies, and data analyses. A relationship with Middleway House, Monroe County's shelter for women fleeing domestic violence, proved particularly fruitful: not only did he help the shelter's staff with an ongoing project there, but he also helped to supervise I.U. student interns working at Middleway, and he began new scholarly projects with two of the shelter's staff. In the spring, he began to attend meetings of the Monroe County Task Force on Domestic Violence.
Dr. Canales-Portalatín served his department on the undergraduate committee, and was additionally called upon by the colloquium committee to help stage a colloquium on domestic violence. Also on campus, he took advantage of the many events sponsored by the Office of Latino Affairs. It was in the midst of all this activity, furthermore, that Dr. Canales-Portalatín finally earned the title of "Dr." he received his Ph.D. in Ecological Community Psychology from Michigan State University in the fall of '95 with a dissertation entitled "A Risk Assessment of Multiple Referrals to a Probation Department."
Overall, Dr. Canales-Portalatín found his time here to be professionally advantageous and culturally enriching. He had time to finish his dissertation and the opportunity to learn from his colleagues how scholars from other institutions practice the study of criminal justice. He got to see first-hand how professional practitioners in the field of criminal justice approach their work. This fall, he will take his experiences and knowledge with him to Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, where he will take a position in their Criminal Justice Department.