This semester, Milligan welcomed several new faculty members, including Dr. Ken Lang who will oversee the Criminology and Criminal Justice major that was added in 2021. Dr. Lang has had 25 years of law enforcement experience, 15 years investigating violent crimes, and 13 years as a forensic artist.
Dr. Lang says he always had a passion for police work.
“When I was in high school the boy scouts had what’s called explorer post and they had a law enforcement explorer post with the Maryland state police.” he adds “I just loved it. I just thought it was great.”
Dr. Ken Lang
After turning 21, Lang became a police officer and started working for the Havre de Grace police department. He was then hired by the Baltimore County police department, and continued working there for 23 years. He worked mostly with violent crimes for 15 years, investigating rapes, murders, and robberies.
His supervisors recommended him the position of an adjunct instructor for the police academy where he would find a love for teaching. He became a certified police instructor for the state of Maryland and taught investigative courses. He then went back to school and got his masters at Columbia Southern University. He decided to work with Milligan because of Dr. Tara Cosco, Associate Professor of Education and because he could openly express and share how his faith has intertwined his profession.
A large basis of his teaching derives from restorative justice. Dr. Lang described restorative justice as such:
“So, you can have a victim, you can have an offender, and then you have members of the community or members of the family that were affected by the wrongdoing or the crime, and we bring them in together”.
The idea of this ideology is for the offender to “check their hearts” which Lang says works great with his faith. While he never knew of this concept while working in the field, Lang says he learned of it while beginning his work at University of Valley Forge.
“It’s not a slap on the wrist and it’s not a replacement of the existing system,”
Lang mentions that while applying to Milligan, they liked the concept of building and developing a program that had restorative justice ingrained into it.
