A dream realized
Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration gets
officer’s career off the ground
n BY JENNIFER TRATTLER
At 36-years-old, Hugo Torres is embarking on a newfound career
at the Essex County Sheriff’s Office. If not for the will and determination to go back to school, Torres might still be working in the public sector but not in the way he always imagined.
“It’s always been in me. I have always wanted to help. I’ve been
that way since (I was) a kid,” Torres acknowledged. “I found that
being a police officer was the best way to do it.”
That wasn’t always the case. For a number of years Torres worked
in the healthcare industry, most recently as a financial analyst for
Saint Barnabas Medical Center before deciding that wasn’t quite the
way he wanted to give back to his community.
“I enjoy talking to people face-to-face. Being a police officer is the
easiest and most direct way to interact with the community and get
to know who people are,” Torres noted.
He pursued his associate’s degree and graduated from Essex
County College in December 2009, and once the education bug bit,
it bit hard. One afternoon he saw an advertisement from Rutgers
School of Public Affairs and Administration at a bus stop. It read,
“Want to serve the public? Want to know how? Call this number.”
Torres met with the dean a week later.
“My first course was ‘Public Service as a Responsible Citizen’ and
it was based on public agencies,” Torres recalled. “It sparked an
interest in the (Master’s of Public Administration) program and I
started considering a career in law enforcement.”
Torres enrolled in the MPA program in the spring of 2010. With
the credits he culminated from his undergraduate career, he was
able to earn both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in three years.
“My weekends – Friday, Saturday and Sunday – were spent in the
library just studying. It was a sacrifice that I knew was going to pay
off in the end and I graduated Magna Cum Laude,” Torres proudly
stated.
Candidates for the MPA degree complete 42 credits including a
core curriculum of 33 credits and nine concentration credits. Torres
specialized in Public and Nonprofit Performance Management,
highlighted by courses including “Evidence-Based Public Management and Policy,” “Performance Measurement and Reporting for
Public and Nonprofit Organizations” and “Results-Driven Strategic
Management.”
All of these classes, and those particularly in his specialization,
prepared him for his new career.
“I just started my career as a police officer, but it helps me understand how the public sector works and how law enforcement is part
of it from unions to the chain of command,” Torres recognized.
If not for the help of the professors and guidance counselors at
Rutgers, Torres acknowledges those three years might have proven
to be much more difficult.
“I just got my associate’s degree and that was tough. I knew my BA
and MA would be tougher,” admited Torres. “I thought it was going
to be overwhelming.”
Torres cites the “professors and their guidance” as being instrumental to completing the degree: “They were there for me from the
beginning and they took me under their wings.”
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NEW JERSEY COPS
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JULY 2015
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