UW-Superior
Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Criminal Justice
Human Behavior, Justice, & Diversity
Dr. Meg Chrusciel is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Criminal Justice at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Her research examines issues related to crime, victimization, policing, and justice, with particular interests in drug policy, mental health crisis response, and the ways criminal justice policy shapes individual and community outcomes. She has published research on policing, alcohol and crime, school safety, and gender, and is currently studying police and probation officers’ perspectives on responding to mental health crises.
Alongside her research, Dr. Chrusciel enjoys mentoring undergraduate researchers and helping students develop independent research projects. Several of her students have presented their work at regional and national conferences, reflecting her commitment to making research an accessible and meaningful part of the undergraduate experience.
Teaching and Learning Philosophy
I often tell my students that if a problem were simple, we would have solved it by now.
Criminal justice is full of questions that resist easy answers. Indeed, its complexity is one of the reasons I love teaching it. Crime, victimization, policing, punishment, and law cannot be understood apart from history, policy, culture, and human experience. Every answer seems to uncover new questions, and the more we learn, the more we realize how much is left to understand. That’s why I push my students to challenge what they think they know. Over time, they become more comfortable living in that complexity instead of rushing to certainty.
In my classroom, we debate ideas, work through real cases, and test assumptions against evidence. Sometimes the best thing to come out of a discussion isn’t an answer at all. It’s a better question. I don’t expect students to leave with every issue resolved. Instead, I leave still asking questions.
I teach because I believe people can grow. More often than not, growth looks like someone rethinking an opinion they were certain about, asking a harder question, or really listening to someone whose experience is different from their own. That’s the classroom I hope to create. A place where people think out loud, challenge one another with respect, change their minds when the evidence calls for it, and leave asking better questions than they started with.
