Educating the justice system’s next generation

Criminology and Criminal Justice Assistant Professor Amny Shuraydi is known for her hands-on classes. In one of her courses, Shuraydi’s class partners with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department to examine cold cases. 

“It’s important to try to make lessons applicable when you can. When figuring out what you want to do with your life, getting that experience can be really affirming to a career choice, or it can help you shift,” says Shuraydi, who co-teaches the cold case class with Criminology and Criminal Justice Lecturer Gregory Osowski. “Film and media portrayals, like ‘Law & Order’ and ‘Criminal Minds,’ are different from reality. We want students to see the reality of what they are learning in class.”

The College of Arts, Sciences and Letters educator is also known for her thoughtful teaching style. Her web reviews note her constructive feedback in class and include the phrases “she cares about all her students,” “she keeps you engaged,” and “one of the greatest professors I’ve ever had.” In an interview, Lorjon Ali, Shuraydi’s former student at the University of Texas at Dallas, called Shuraydi a “great mentor” and noted that she “has provided me with many years of guidance, support, and advice.”

One of the reasons Shuraydi, who grew up in Dearborn and went to Fordson High School, knows how to reach UM-Dearborn students? Because she once was one.

The daughter of a UM-Dearborn alum, Shuraydi turned down scholarship opportunities to larger institutions, explaining,  “I chose UM-Dearborn because I wanted professors who knew me — not giant, intimidating classes. I had so many amazing professors who taught me so much through hands-on lessons. I had journalism classes — I originally wanted to be a print-based journalist — where I was taught about investigative reporting by Pulitzer Prize winners,” she says. Shuraydi also had a class where she met and talked with women in the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility. “It was the first time I did anything like that and it stuck with me. It reminded me that good people make mistakes,” says Shuraydi, who is a 2011 CASL alum. “These are the types of experiences that I had as an undergraduate that helped shape me.”

Now in her third academic year of teaching at UM-Dearborn, she sometimes feels very much like that student when walking down the CASL hallways. “I even catch myself wanting to call my colleagues by doctor or professor since I had some of them when I was a student,” she says with a laugh.

But Shuraydi now has nearly 15 years of work and teaching experience. She has her master’s degree in communications and social justice from the University of Windsor and her doctorate in criminology from the University of Texas at Dallas, where she taught before her hire as an assistant professor and graduate director at East Texas A&M University. She’s conducted research and learned from some of the top criminologists in the world. She credits these experiences to shaping her into the professor she is today.

“UM-Dearborn always had a place in my heart. I started to understand who I was as a person by getting to have experiences at UM-Dearborn without the intimidation of a bigger place and having them in a safe space where I actually knew my professors,” she says. “I always valued that.”

Through her own journey, Shuraydi understands that career goals can change. She enjoys being a professor, but she started out with a different focus. As much as she wanted to be a journalist, she later realized that she didn’t want to report on what was wrong with the world — she wanted to find answers on why problems exist and work to fix them.

Raised by a social psychologist father, she chose to pursue a minor in sociology as part of her bachelor’s degree. This led to her taking a criminology class during her senior year, taught by Associate Professor of Sociology and criminologist Kevin Early. It piqued her interest. “The deeper you get into learning about why people commit crime, it makes you realize the role that systemic issues in our country have in these decisions,” she says. “You need to address the systemic issues to reduce crime.”

She says her UM-Dearborn classes illuminated a path that helped her find the direction that was right for her. And graduate school gave her more insight into societal needs, research methods and how to apply what she was learning.

“Criminological research is important because we need evidence-based data to help inform policies — whether for prevention, rehabilitation or response — in the criminal justice system or other realms, like therapy or treatment centers. You cannot make meaningful changes without understanding best practices,” she says. 

To help make meaningful changes in her own community, Shuraydi — who is Arab American — focused her 2018 dissertation, “I'll smoke, but I won’t eat pork,” on a topic for which there was little published research: the Arab American community and drug use. But she didn’t approach the topic solely from a numbers standpoint. She also collected people’s personal stories over a three-year period. 

She says she found participants for this research largely through luck — one was a friend Shuraydi met as a student in Dallas; he introduced her to others. “As our friendship grew, I realized that this friend had begun smoking and later selling marijuana. Buying and dealing are very illegal in Texas and are looked down on in the Arab world. I asked him if he’d be willing to participate in a study for a paper, and was lucky that he agreed because he already trusted me,” says Shuraydi, who notes the study participants also took harder drugs. “Over time, he introduced me to more people and it grew from there.” 

This work is especially important to Shuraydi because she grew up seeing how drug use, addiction and mental health issues were taboo topics in the Arab American community, even though people knew they existed. “It was common to read stories of young people dying, with the excuse that, ‘Oh, their heart just stopped,’ which typically wasn’t true,” she says. “Research on this topic was limited to hospitals or rehabilitation centers and was rare. There was very little research on active users or dealers, because no one was willing to share their experiences. But having firsthand accounts is important, because if we better understand the underlying reasons that people use drugs, we can learn more about best ways to approach prevention and rehabilitation.” 

It’s been a few years since she did the study and Shuraydi has noticed some changes. “Mental health and addiction are more openly discussed now,” she says. “Hopefully, that leads to more transparency in other areas so that people in need can be connected to help.”

Shuraydi says connections to support are vital for navigating change and growth and overcoming adversity. She recalls how difficult the transition to university can be as students  explore majors, norms and career options and wanted to come back to her hometown and alma mater to help the next generation. 

“Many of our students have big dreams and goals, but want or need to stay a little closer to home while starting out. They may need time to learn about themselves or figuring out what they want to do after graduation,” she says. “The faculty I had at UM-Dearborn helped me find my path and change direction. I wanted to come back home and pay it forward by taking what I’ve learned from my experiences and to teach students in the place that helped shape me.”

Story by Sarah Tuxbury