MMSS Senior Thesis Police Projects

back row: Dr. Mark Iris, Leo Zhu, Yuji Xie, Tim Yuan, Ken Park;
front row: Andrew Huson, Chan Ro, Katie Kwon, Jeremy Yablon
(not pictured: Thomas Gao)

Mark Iris, a lecturer in the Political Science Department and MMSS Program, has an unusual background for an NU faculty member: he served as Executive Director of the City of Chicago Police Board for 21 years. During his time working with the Chicago Police, he began to note that major police agencies collect massive quantities of data, but lack staff with the necessary skills to analyze these data and make full use of them to improve police operations and service to the public. During those same years, Dr. Iris was teaching part time at Northwestern, and learned of the MMSS program. He discovered MMSS seniors have strong statistical and analytical skills, but often need data and topics for their senior theses. He realized a perfect match was in the making: students with strong statistical skills in need of data, and police agencies with lots of data but short on personnel with statistical skills.

Dr. Iris began to link interested students with the Chicago Police Department, then expanded the scope of these projects to police departments in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Houston. This year for the first time, Long Beach, California, invited MMSS students to do a project there.

Students typically work in teams of three. They get guidance and targeted background readings from Dr. Iris. They travel with him, usually in the early fall, to the host city, to meet with key personnel to scope out the project, assess the data resources available, and meet with key personnel with whom they then have substantial follow-up contact. The topics identified by these police departments are of vital importance to those agencies, at a time when local budgets are under extreme stress. This year the topics include use of force incidents and patrol allocation. By helping these departments to better protect the public, the MMSS seniors are both meeting a crucial MMSS degree requirement while also providing a real public service.

In the process, students learn to cope with large databases (data sets sometimes have Ns in the millions), the vagaries of dealing with real world data, working on a major project as part of a team, and the vital skill of translating complex statistical analyses into clear standard English, readily understood by people not so quantitatively sophisticated. These are all valuable assets to add to one’s resume, skills appreciated by prospective employers.

For the MMSS seniors, the high point comes towards the end of the academic year, when they return to the host city, and present their research report. They not only submit a written document – they give a full PowerPoint presentation to the senior command staff of the police department.  Few NU seniors can claim a comparable experience.

The projects have been well received. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was so impressed by the first MMSS project in 2006-07 that it requested travel expense support from the Los Angeles Police Foundation. This year, three MMSS seniors are working with the LAPD on the seventh LAPD-MMSS project; the total number of students supported by the Foundation is now up to 17.

The police agencies clearly value these projects. The seniors are now busily working on their projects in anticipation of their trips this spring. Dr. Iris hopes to recruit a new roster of MMSS juniors in May, for new projects in the 2012-2013 academic year.