Professor & Program Coordinator, Criminal Justice & Criminology Studies

Rebecca Rist-Brown is the program coordinator for the Criminal Justice program. From 2010 to 2014, she taught General Biology and Microbiology at Middlesex. She also experience teaching online criminal justice courses for American Public University Systems. Additional online courses included Bloodstain Pattern Analysis, Forensic Firearms Investigations, Criminalistics, Criminal Investigations, Pathology of Death, and Criminal Justice Administration. She also previously taught high school biology, but her true passion is teaching college-level criminal justice and forensics courses. Rebecca is a certified high school biology teacher with a master’s degree in education from the University of New Haven.

Prior to her career in education, Rebecca spent six years in law enforcement. She trained with the Federal Police Corps Program in Salt Lake City, Utah. After moving back to Connecticut, she worked as a patrol officer for two different municipal police departments, assigned to the midnight shift. Strangely enough, she experienced bizarre cases and an abnormal amount of untimely death cases. As the evidence officer, Rebecca was responsible for managing the evidence room, processing crime scenes, and processing evidence. She also became a certified police instructor in criminalistics and crime scene investigations. Her other assignments included Police Explorers adviser and car seat safety technician.

During this time, Rebecca earned another master’s degree, this time in forensic science/advanced investigations from the University of New Haven Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science. Part of her coursework included a nine-month internship, completed with the Hartford Police Department’s Crime Scene Unit. She assisted with homicide investigations, fatal motor vehicle accidents, robberies, assaults, shootings, burglaries, as well as crime scene processing. “For students who are wondering, NO, it was not like the show CSI! The realities of investigating an actual crime scene are starkly different than what is depicted on CSI,” Rebecca explained.

Rebecca earned her bachelor’s in criminal justice/investigative services from the University of New Haven. During her undergraduate coursework, she completed an internship with the West Haven Police Department’s Identification Unit. She helped process crime scenes, and examined fingerprint evidence and the enhancement of digital evidence.

She is a member of the American Society of Criminology and the American Criminal Justice Association. Rebecca received the Chief’s Award in Forensic Advances, the High Five Excellence Award from American Public University System, and a proclamation from the city of Middletown declaring May 27 as “Professor Rebecca Rist-Brown Day.”

When she is not teaching, Rebecca spends time with her husband and her son, Dustin. She loves outdoor activities, especially gardening, and movies.