Anne Strouth attended North Central State College to receive an associate degree in Criminal Justice. She went on to get her bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Ashland University in 1998, fiinally attending Capella University to receive a master’s degree in a Specialization in Criminal Justice.

Strouth is the program director of the Criminal Justice Department. Before becoming a full-time professor in January, she was an adjunct professor. Being one of the few professors left in the department, she teaches all the classes offered in the department.

While attending college at NC State, Strouth joined the police department as a dispatcher to help pay for college. However, after two weeks of working she knew she wanted to be in the field instead of behind a desk.

Strouth is a police academy commander at The Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy (OPOTA) and has been a police officer for the last 30 years.

On the weekends, she can be found in a patrol car because she wants to be able to provide her students with “new material [since] the field is always changing.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to be an educator if you don’t have the experience in the field,” Strouth said.
Her field experience helps her in the classroom by informing her students on what to expect in their careers and the best way to prepare them for it.

Sophomore Emma Hinton has Strouth for victimology and criminal investigation. She thinks Strouth’s teaching methods and having a women’s perspective in a male-dominated industry are beneficial to those that take her classes.

“[Strouth’s] field experience helps in the class because she has firsthand experience in the topics that she is teaching,” Hinton said. “She does a lot of hands-on activities in class and provides examples from her own experiences.”

Students aren’t the only ones impressed with Strouth’s experience and teaching methods. Dr. Jared Rosenberger, a colleague of Strouth, has enjoyed working with her due to her “wonderful ideas and insight.”

“When you are learning from people who are also practitioners in the field you are studying, you always enjoy having that depth of knowledge of how this works in class and how [she] does it every day,” Rosenberger said. “It’s something that resonates with students.”

What motivates Strouth is her passion to help and educate her students. She believes that teaching is “the best avenue for [her] to make a difference” in the field of criminology.

“We need to change the field. We need good people,” Strouth concluded.