Jamie Koerner

    Seward County Sheriff Joe Yocum strives to continue learning and recently graduated with a master's degree in criminal justice from Kaplan University, an online university based out of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
     Yocum is also a teacher.
     He began in 1999, teaching a safety traffic option class, and then in 2003 started at Hamilton College in Lincoln.
     At Hamilton, he teaches criminal justice classes and was named the new program coordinator in 2004. For his master's, Yocum was able to take classes at Kaplan online through a benefit at Hamilton College.
     He said he plans to continue his studies, working toward a doctorate in criminal justice, which will be offered at Hamilton in 2008.
     In 1988, Yocum started at the sheriff's department in Seward.
     He was assigned department training instructor duties in 1991.
     Even with a full time career, Yocum kept striving to fill his bank of knowledge.
     He came to the department with a degree of applied science in fire science technology from Southeast Community College-Lincoln and in 1992 he earned a bachelor's degree in human resource management from Bellevue University in Omaha.
     Around the time that Yocum earned the bachelor's degree, he was promoted to sergeant at the sheriff's department making him responsible for training, scheduling, managing and organizing the control side of the department.
     "I wanted to know and learn more," Yocum said. "If anything, what a law enforcement officer needs to be is a people person. A human resource manager was a good fit for me when I received the bachelor's degree, but I still wanted to continue my education."
     Yocum was promoted to Sheriff of Seward County in 1998, a title that he still holds today.
     This year, Yocum completed his master's degree at Kaplan after taking online courses for approximately a year and a half.
     At a Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy (NA) conference in Quantico, Va., in 2001, Yocum took two of the classes that applied to his master's program at Kaplan.
     The academy is difficult to get into because only one-half of one percent of the people who apply are accepted, Yocum said. There were 250 law enforcement officers from all over the world who attended NA with Yocum.
     "It was a once in a lifetime opportunity," Yocum said. "[NA] helped me immensely in the areas of media relations and death scene investigations–plus the experience in-and-of itself."
     He said his time at NA sparked the idea that there were other ways he could continue learning, even with a full-time job.
     Then, approximately five years ago, Yocum was driving with his wife, Sandy, in Lincoln and saw a sign outside Hamilton College advertising a new criminal justice program.
     "I wonder if they will need substitutes to teach," Yocum said he told his wife.
     He later stopped at the school, applied and was hired as an adjunct faculty member. His first classes were introduction to criminal justice and criminal justice history.
     Since then, Yocum has taught night classes when it works with his schedule and was later asked to take the program coordinator position.
     He said the hardest part was deciding with his wife if the new job would interfere too much with family time.
     Yocum said he is busy, but his schedule between the sheriff's office, the college and home has worked out fine.
     Yocum said his primary job as program coordinator is to find and train new teachers for the criminal justice department at Hamilton, but Yocum told the college upon his hire that his primary job is as Sheriff of Seward County. The college has worked with Yocum to coordinate schedules and has kept him informed, Yocum said.
     "I run a jail, I have calls for service, I have personnel," Yocum said about the busy schedule he has at the sheriff's department.
     His time in Seward County accounts for all week days and more, but having a second job as an adjunct teacher and program coordinator would not be possible if it weren't for all the good people he works with, Yocum said.
     He said the other teachers at the college are responsible and accountable, so he doesn't have to constantly monitor them, and the employees at the sheriff's department are flexible and hard working.
     "They do a lot for me, and I am humbled," Yocum said. "And there are people [at the sheriff's department] who are there when they are needed and accomplish a great service for the community. I am very lucky."
     Currently, Yocum is teaching terrorism and homeland security and white collar crime at Hamilton.
     In addition, Yocum wrote a 150-page thesis, Policing in Nebraska, A 50-Year Analysis of Officers Killed in the Line of Duty (1955-2004), for his master's and it is currently being reviewed for publishing in a journal for criminological research and criminal justice, a peer-review journal that publishes scholarly articles related to the previous subject matter.
     In the thesis, he wrote about 44 officers over a 50-year period who were killed while on duty.
     Yocum said that if it's published he hopes officers would learn from the information he presents in the thesis, which could prevent future deaths of officers in the line of duty.