Media Contact
Jennifer French Giarratano
Public Relations Manager
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
jgiarratano@gsu.edu
ATLANTA—The Andrew Young School of Policy Studies’ Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology recently received a $30,000 Textbook Transformation Grant from Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG), a University System of Georgia program. It will be used to reduce textbook costs for the department’s required courses by offering a no-cost section.
The AGL grant, which supports the college’s AYS Open initiative, is projected to save more than 1,000 students of criminal justice and criminology approximately $290,000 total per academic year.
“We’re very excited about these results,” said Dean Sally Wallace. “They show how the digital world can advance student success.”
Now in its 15th round, the ALG Textbook Transformation Grant program has impacted more than 48,000 students across Georgia State University, advancing student success by saving them more than $7.5 million in textbook, software and related costs. System-wide, the program has provided 296,000 students more than $51 million in savings.
Georgia State leads all USG institutions in the amount of savings these grants have provided students.
“This grant advances the goals of AYS Open, our commitment to share and use more free information,” said Scott Jacques. He developed and leads AYS Open, one of three strategic priorities in the college’s Digital Landscape initiative. “Expensive textbooks harm learning. This transformation to no-cost materials will make our students more successful.”
The University System’s ALG grant program is scheduled to deliver two more rounds of awards through the spring semester, with application deadlines in January and April, 2020. Jacques encourages all faculty to take advantage of the opportunity the program provides.
“Affordable Learning Georgia is great partner, helping us make no-cost textbooks the status quo.”
Featured Researcher
Scott Jacques
Associate Professor
Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology
Scott Jacques is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri, St. Louis in 2010. His research focuses on crimes against drug dealers, the offenders’ perspective, and theorizing method. He has interviewed hundreds of active offenders in the United States and the Netherlands, including drug sellers, robbers, and shoplifters. His books are Grey Area: Regulating Amsterdam’s Coffeeshops (UCL Press, 2019) and, coauthored with Richard Wright, Code of the Suburb: Inside the World of Young Middle-Class Drug Dealers (University of Chicago Press, 2015). His work has been published in journals such as Criminology, The International Journal of Drug Policy, The Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Justice Quarterly, and Theoretical Criminology. He also serves as Editor of The International Criminal Justice Review.