Published: March 01, 2007 11:04 am         

Tracking police training

Ball State president, students work with Logansport police to simplify paper trails

Carl Swan described it as “dinosauric.”

The Logansport policeman was in the same room with other officers, two Ball State students and a former criminology major who was not in the Logansport City Building to file a complaint or interrogate a suspect.

Ball State President Jo Ann Gora, the first female president of a major state university, came to Logansport to participate in an exercise designed to demonstrate how Ball State students can work with Indiana companies.

Officers Mike Morphet, David Kain, A.J. Rozzi, Dan Faris, Jesse Huggins and Cathi Collins joined Swan in sharing their suggestions for replacing a thick, bound volume of training records with a new computer program. Computer science student Scott McNeany, brother of Columbia Middle School Assistant Principal James McNeany, and Vanessa Chapman, a communications student, worked with officers to come up with a program that not only tracks what required state training officers have completed, but what additional training they need. The program provides dates when training must be renewed.

With Gora’s input and the help of computer science professor Vinayak Tanksale, the Ball State students were able to come up with a rough model for a computer program that eventually will eliminate the black 3-ring binder the department has used for years.

“This is the heart of immersion learning,” said Gora.

The program features students with different majors working together on a project. It gives Ball State some exposure, and it provides Indiana communities and companies some access to college resources that can improve efficiency, reduce time spent on tasks and give students a taste of what they will face in the real world.

Seven students from four departments worked on the program. As a team, students spent only 15 minutes together before a meeting with Logansport police officers on Wednesday. Officers such as Farris and Rozzi said the program would enable the department to track not only the state-mandated training that has to be completed annually, but additional hours officers pursue on their own.

“Some guys get up to 40 hours of training a year,” Rozzi said.

After seeing the presentation, Swan said he was sold on the concept the students produced.

“It’s what we’re looking for because it’s manually intensive to log all this,” he said.

Dave Kitchell may be contacted at (574) 732-5150, or via e-mail at david.kitchell@pharostribune.com