The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has appointed Jason Waller, TJC criminal justice department chair/professor, to the Texas Transfer Advisory Committee's subcommittee on criminal justice.
In its first meeting held earlier this week, Waller was elected committee co-chair. The group is composed of 40 faculty members from across the state, with equal representation from public community colleges and public universities as well as two members from the TTAC.
As part of this subcommittee, he will aid in the development of the Texas Transfer Field of Study Curriculum for Criminal Justice. The role of the subcommittee is to ensure that students who attend one of Texas’ 50-plus community colleges not only receive the highest quality of education in the field of criminal justice, but also that students who wish to transfer to a four-year university do so with all of their criminal justice courses transferring seamlessly.
“Educators at our community colleges in Texas not only have the respective educational credentials, but also years of real-world experience that they can rely upon in the classroom,” Waller said. “Ensuring that the courses taught at our community colleges are accepted at the university level is also crucial.”
Waller, a Gladewater native, is a longtime resident of Tyler. He holds an Associate of Applied Science degree from TJC and Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from The University of Texas at Tyler. He was the first graduate of UT Tyler’s M.S. in Criminal Justice program. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Higher Education Leadership at Texas A&M University-Commerce, with an anticipated completion date of Summer 2022.
He is in his 21st year at TJC, with 14 of those as department chair. He is also a past president of the TJC Faculty Senate. Before joining the TJC faculty, he spent 20 years in law enforcement, beginning his career at TJC as a police cadet. He later joined the Tyler Police Department and then worked for the Smith County Sheriff’s Department, where he served approximately 14 years as lead homicide detective. He left the sheriff’s office as a lieutenant over violent crime investigations. He holds both the Master Peace Officer and Instructor licenses from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.
His wife, Silvana Vierkant-Waller, is an English professor at TJC. He has two grown daughters and has been a Texas high school football official since 2005.
For more on the TJC Criminal Justice program, go to TJC.edu/CriminalJustice.