Students in Pellissippi State Community College’s criminal justice program this semester have a unique opportunity to learn from someone who has practiced it at the utmost degree every single day for more than three decades: Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen.

Allen, district attorney general of the 6th Judicial District, has been on the Criminal Justice Advisory Board at Pellissippi State for several years, and has hired many students from the program as interns in her office. Teaching criminal law at the college’s Magnolia Avenue campus was a natural next step in her partnership with Pellissippi.

“It’s just been a wonderful win-win for both the school and my office – for the system,” Allen said. “It really is helping this next generation of criminal justice professionals have a degree of experience – and real-world, hands-on experience – that they may not have gotten.”

While Allen was apprehensive about teaching, Pellissippi Criminal Justice Academic Coordinator and Associate Professor Donna Trogdon persuaded Allen to expand beyond the courtroom to the classroom.

Guest instructors like Allen align with Pellissippi’s new five-year strategic plan, and its goal of becoming a “career immersion college,” Trogdon said. Allen joins a faculty also comprised of former correctional and probation officers, federal employees and detectives.

Allen’s knowledge of the criminal justice system is invaluable and shows students “how everything works behind the scenes,” Trogdon said. “We can teach in a classroom environment the academic version of things, but if they don’t see it, touch it, smell it or go behind the curtain, they still don’t know if it’s something they want to do until they’re in it.”

Allen found that students were surprisingly eager to learn the basics of criminal law, which she had worried they would perceive as dry.

“They are just like sponges,” Allen said. “They find everything exciting. And I have to remember, I’ve been doing this for 35 years, so a little bit of the first new excitement has worn off – but, boy, not to these students. They are interested in every single topic we cover. They are on fire to learn this.”

Many of them, Allen noted, are already in the criminal-justice field – as cadets with the Knoxville Police Department, at the Family Justice Center or in other ways.

They bring those experiences into the classroom, she said, which encourages even more robust engagement.

“These are students that are not only learning criminal law, but they’re actually living the criminal law,” Allen said. “They find it extremely interesting. They ask great questions. We have wonderful discussions.”

Allen’s position affords students the opportunity to gain a unique level of access to Knox County criminal justice.  She has paired each of her students with an assistant district attorney from her office to explore a topic they are interested in and prepare a presentation on the topic.

Criminal justice student Kaelynn Tucker is working with an assistant district attorney and victim-witness coordinator to learn more about the domestic violence cases they have seen in the courts.

“It’s just a whole different ball game when you can be in the system and see how things are running,” Tucker said.

Learning Tennessee law from someone who practices it gives Tucker and her classmates an academic and professional edge, and Allen teaches it in a way that brings what is in the book to life.

“It’s actually changed my point of view on where I want to be in the criminal justice profession,” Tucker said. “Being in her criminal law class, I have decided myself that I want to try and work alongside of her and work in the court system.”

In addition to interacting with practitioners in the field, the students have visited the courthouse to sit in on trials where they are watching, learning, asking great questions and taking their assignments very seriously, Allen said.

Students are “getting real-world experience, and that’s so critically important, because these students are the future,” Allen said. They “will be in the real world, doing exactly what the professionals that we are pairing them with are doing, in a few years.”

Based on her work with Pellissippi students, Allen believes the future of the criminal justice system is in good hands.

“I have put in a lot of work that has been fun,” Allen said. “It’s been rewarding.”

This article was originally posted here.