UPPER BURRELL, Pa. -- Vanessa Trecki, a senior majoring in administration of justice and psychology, recently received the Undergraduate Scholarship Award at the Pennsylvania Association for Criminal Justice Educators conference.
The annual award is given to an undergraduate criminal justice student in Pennsylvania based on scholarly activity in criminal justice/criminology. Trecki, who delivered a paper on intimate partner violence at the conference, was cited for co-authoring a publication with a faculty member, presenting her work at the campus’ Research and Creative Exposition, and conducting research about attitudes towards sex offenders.
A member of the dean’s list, Trecki served her internship at the U.S Probation and Pretrial Services in Pittsburgh. The Ross Township native got a first-hand view of the inner workings of three departments -- pretrial, pre-sentence and post-conviction. She listened to phone interviews with offenders, attended pretrial court sessions and sentencing hearings, researched docket sheets, verified information provided by offenders and traveled with post-conviction officers in the field.
“I had the opportunity to witness three different departments in action and saw the ways in which they interacted with one another to move an offender through the federal system,” said Trecki, a product of North Hills High School/ “We would visit offenders in their homes to check on their progress with treatment as well as collect urine for analysis. I attended meetings that were cognitive behavioral therapy-oriented in their approaches for offenders who had prior drug convictions and were on federal probation.”
Trecki will graduate in May and continue her education in graduate school. She plans to specialize in sex offender policies. The double major will allow Trecki to work with offenders in a research setting.
“The most beneficial experience of my internship was learning about sexual offenders in the federal system where these individuals primarily disobeyed sex offender registration requirements," Tecki said. “This further interested me in learning about Megan’s Law and Pennsylvania’s laws regarding these individuals.”
In addition to the Criminal Justice Educators scholarship, Trecki is the recipient of a campus scholarship: the Penn State New Kensington Advisory Board Trustee scholarship. The endowment was established in 2008 as part of the board's leadership gift to the campus. The scholarship is geared toward upperclassmen who are campus leaders.
For more about the Administration of Justice program, visit http://www.nk.psu.edu/Academics/Degrees/43065.htm.