Aspiring police officers often seek an education that prepares them to make an immediate impact on the job. But officers who want to advance in their career in law enforcement typically need leadership and administrative skills difficult to learn without earning a college degree. 

Brian W. Donavant, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Criminal Justice, Social Work and Sociology at Southeast Missouri State University, is attuned to the needs of law enforcement professionals who are struggling to reach the next level in their careers.  

“Officers who may be stopped out and didn’t finish their college degree are now moving into administrative positions or executive leadership, and they’re finding they don’t have the skills they need,” Donavant says. “They need college degrees, and especially graduate degrees, that focus on leadership and applied research for policy development and policy application.” 

These skills gaps are potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of police officers across the country. A 2022 report from Data USA shows that nearly 254,000 of the 850,000 police officers in the workforce have completed some college coursework but do not have a degree, while 113,000 officers just have a high school or equivalent diploma.  

And, those early and midcareer officers who want to gain skills by earning a degree may find it difficult to fit classes into their already busy schedules. “They work shifts. They work long hours. Most of them have families,” says Donavant. “So online learning is the only way to reach them, especially with criminal justice professionals who work around the clock.” 

The Rise of Online Learning in Police Training 

Before transitioning to higher education, Donavant spent decades working as a criminal justice professional. Though he was unaware of it at the time, his career in law enforcement ran parallel to the development of online learning. Eventually, they intersected. “I was just blessed to be in the right place at the right time,” Donavant says. 

His career spanned multiple areas of law enforcement, from handling local, federal and international criminal investigations to working in criminal law and policy development. As Donavant moved up in rank, his responsibilities began to change.  

“I started getting involved in policy development, and eventually I was tapped as the training director for my agency in Gulfport, Mississippi,” Donavant says. “I was in charge of overseeing and certifying all the training for the police department.” It was in 2005 — while Donavant was working to complete his doctorate at The University of Southern Mississippi — that he began to notice a shift in his work. 

“We were sending officers to face-to-face training programs across the state and around the country, and that cost a lot of money,” Donavant says. “Officers started doing these online correspondence courses and bringing in those certificates, but we didn’t know anything about the credibility of the course.” 

Determining Quality Education in Online Police Training 

With more officers showing an interest in online training modules, at a time when online learning was still in its infancy, Donavant developed his own criteria to assess the quality of online police training courses. “I would have to go in and evaluate each course to see if it met the state mandate for in-service training,” says Donavant. 

As these online training programs gained more traction in his agency, Donavant decided to make online police training the focus of his dissertation. “My doctoral research involved looking at online education, how we determine quality education and how to develop quality online delivery,” Donavant says.  

That dissertation became the first empirical study on the quality of online training for police officers, and it was later converted into a top-tier research article and cited internationally by organizations that included the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “It was cutting-edge research at the time,” Donavant says. “A need we had at the police department validated this type of training that we just really hadn’t embraced before.” 

Eventually, his police career transitioned to a full-time role in higher education, as a professor of criminal justice and executive director of outreach at the University of Tennessee at Martin. “It sounds cliche, but all of a sudden I had this wake-up call,” Donavant says. His realization: “I’m not out on the street as much as I used to be, and I really enjoy giving back to younger officers and sharing all of the things I’ve experienced.” 

Adapting Online Education for Criminal Justice Professionals 

One of the key skills Donavant learned during his time as the police training director was how to identify a quality online course, and he has continued to build on the criteria he developed then throughout his experiences in higher education. After joining the talented team of faculty members at SEMO’s Department of Criminal Justice, Social Work, and Sociology in 2024, Donavant saw an opportunity to help the institution refine and grow its online criminal justice programs in some of the same ways he grew online programs at UT Martin.  

“One of the different perspectives I bring to the table is I don’t accept there are courses that can’t be taught online,” says Donavant. Though he acknowledges there are different considerations for online courses when it comes to keeping students engaged and on track to graduate.  

Donavant has been actively involved in optimizing the SEMO Online programs to better suit the needs of working adults in law enforcement. For example, he helped identify an opportunity to better serve these learners through the department’s online Master of Science (MS) in Criminal Justice offering. 

“The faculty and I reconfigured our master’s degree in criminal justice to fit those working adult professionals who are moving into leadership and executive positions,” Donavant says. “It’s geared toward what they’re going to need, a nuts-and-bolts degree for furthering their careers.” These changes are slated to launch in fall 2025. 

What Do Criminal Justice Professionals Need in a Master’s Degree? 

Time was a major factor in fine-tuning the online master’s in criminal justice, especially for working adults who don’t have much to spare outside of their work and family responsibilities. With this in mind, Donavant and his colleagues changed three key areas of the program: semester length, time to completion and credit for work experience. 

Shifting From 16-Week to Eight-Week Semesters 

“All of our graduate courses are online and set up for asynchronous delivery so they can be accessed at any time during the day,” Donavant says. “But a change we made was to split up the traditional 16-week semester into two eight-week terms.” This change will apply to all criminal justice master’s degree classes beginning in summer 2025. 

Why does the length of the semester matter? It can influence the rate at which students persist — or don’t persist — in the program. “By the time you’ve gone 16 weeks, work situations can change, and they may not be able to finish the course,” Donavant says. Life moves quickly for law enforcement professionals, so they need a program that allows them to reach milestones quickly. 

Reducing Time to Completion 

The shorter the program, the sooner working adults can gain the skills they need to advance to a leadership role or increase their impact in their current role. So the SEMO Online team changed the credit requirements for the master’s program in 2025 to help students finish faster. 

“By adjusting the number of hours required from 36 to 30 and moving to eight-week sessions, we’ve reduced time to completion to a reasonable amount. So now instead of a three-year program, full-time students can come in and complete the entire program in 16 months,” says Donavant. “And if they can take a couple of extra courses per semester, they can do it in 12. We want students to hit it hard, hit it fast, get what they need, and move on to the next thing.” 

Granting Credit for Work Experience 

A primary cornerstone of adult education is being able to use prior experiences as building blocks for current learning. So Donavant and his colleagues began using SEMO Online’s Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) program to award academic credit to students in place of specific courses.  

“Many of these working professionals, especially those who are moving into leadership or administrative roles, have attended executive training,” says Donavant. “We’re recognizing that as a great foundation for the things we do here in our program.” 

“Students can earn nine hours of credit through prior learning,” Donavant says. “So if they have this credit, that 12 or 16 months to degree completion can go down to even less.” 

Using Experiential Learning to Increase Student Engagement 

Donavant’s student-centered approach to online learning also extends to the courses he teaches, where experiential learning is central to student’s engagement with the material. “One of my biggest pet peeves in online courses is when faculty post a discussion question and ask students to provide a 250-word response,” says Donavant. “That’s not a discussion. To me, that’s a correspondence course.” 

Donavant uses a video-based learning technique to get students excited about the topics he’s teaching. “I’ll post a video prompt on some contemporary topic related to the material we’re covering, and I’ll pose two or three questions that ask for their position on the topic,” says Donavant. 

“Then the students have to respond to my post with a video post of their own, and then they have to respond to at least two other students’ posts in response to that question,” he says. “It’s kind of like a blog that builds on itself, and the full video format really increases engagement.” 

Donavant teaches applied research courses as well as courses on criminal courts, police administration, police operations, criminal investigations, criminal evidence and constitutional law. He doesn’t shy away from sharing his personal work stories with his students. 

“The benefit of bringing my experiences to the classroom is that it brings the concepts to life,” Donavant says. “I can also fill any gaps in the experiences of working adults because I have more experience than most of them have. So I can bring that in and use it as a learning example, especially for those students who haven’t yet experienced these things in their professional lives.” 

Online Criminal Justice Degree Programs for Working Adults 

When life gets busy, it may feel like there’s no time to pursue your educational goals. But at SEMO Online, you’ll find an accessible learning format and flexible courses that can help you realize your full potential, on your time. You’ll also find supportive, caring faculty members like Brian Donavant to guide you on your path. 

Whether you’re ready to launch a criminal justice career or gain leadership skills to advance in your career, there’s a criminal justice program for you at SEMO Online. Explore the online Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice or online MS in Criminal Justice today.