UC MAS degrees were mandated by Atkinson to be especially suitable for serving specific groups of working professionals with well-defined needs for advanced degree work. In the case of UCI, a joint effort between the school’s Extension Office; the School of Social Ecology; and its Electronic Educational Environment (EEE), which is a collaboration of UCI’s Network and Academic Computing Services, Registrar’s Office, Division of Undergraduate Education and library, has resulted in the development of the first and only online MAS in Criminology Law & Society (CLS).

The UCI Distance Learning Center (DLC), which is under the jurisdiction of UCI Dean of Continuing Education Gary Matkin, along with the School of Social Ecology are currently leading the development of the online MAS in CLS.

DLC Director Jia Frydenberg says it took a "massive approval and review process" to get the go-ahead to develop the new online program. The effort also received $500,000 in start-up funding from UCI.

The MAS in CLS is now in the early part of its second year of development, slated to be launched in January 2003.

In addition to support from the top leadership of the university system and UCI itself, Frydenberg says that an enthusiastic group of faculty from the Department of Criminology, Law and Society are the "movers and shakers" behind the new online program.

Behind the scenes developing the technology infrastructure in collaboration with UCI’s EEE is Larry Cooperman, director, instructional design and technology. Cooperman has expertise in both technology development and education. The DLC also outsources some of the technology and course development responsibilities to free-lance editors and instructional designers, plus a Northern California company for web and graphic design and programming responsibilities.

Initially, the DLC bought into the Prometheus platform for its course management system, but it was decided later that Cooperman would replace that with a home-grown CMS around the infrastructure that EEE had built for supplementing all UCI courses with web technology.

Cooperman’s CMS is near completion, and it will be SCORM compliant and database-driven with a "container hierarchy," he says, adding that he designed the system with a strong focus on facilitating maximum course reusability. "We have gone to a much more finely graded level of learning objects than anybody else," including course lesson, topic, page, media and content, he says. This finely graded container hierarchy will allow for learning objects to be more easily shared between courses. "These things essentially are connected to each other by relational tables. So if you want to build a new course utilizing some of our existing lessons, all you do is change the relational tables. You don’t have to do anything else."

Now, with all the pieces of the technology and education infrastructure development moving forward, Frydenberg hopes the program will attract 30 students for a first cohort group. She explains that the program is not geared to churn out police officers. "We wanted to make sure we were able to reach out to more than just police departments. It’s a very interdisciplinary program.

"We have a very strong national reputation," says Frydenberg. "But more importantly, this program brings together so many areas of criminology, law and society in one place." The electives are "cutting edge by faculty who go all over the world researching these things," she adds. For example, they are working on a course about cyber crime. And the department boasts a nationally recognized expert on gang violence.

Marketing efforts are currently focused in California. The School of Social Ecology is promoting the program through its relationships with local criminal justice organizations. Brochures have been distributed at local criminal justice organization and agency events; press releases have been published inside law enforcement publications; and the web site describing the program continually gets upgraded.

These relatively small marketing efforts have resulted in only 11 individuals applying for acceptance into the program as of late August. However, being such a new program, it has not had a decent period of time to promote itself. Frydenberg also believes the costs (about $21,600 in tuition and fees for two years), along with the inability of employers to pony up with adequate tuition reimbursement programs, could be prohibitive factors in relation to quickly garnering students. Another drawback could be that newly admitted students are required to take an accelerated six-day course in residence on the UCI campus at the beginning of their course of study in January.

At press time, the MAS in CLS program was not off to a grand start in terms of number of applicants, but it’s still in a development phase and enrollment figures are expected to rise in the near future.