LOCAL ELECTIONS LONG BEACH CITY COUNCIL : Drummond’s Ph.D. Draws Challenges

City Council candidate Doug Drummond boasts in nearly all of his campaign literature that he holds a doctorate in criminology that would help him solve this city’s epidemic of crime.

But Drummond’s degree is from a university that is 3 years old, has never been accredited and operates out of three suites in an office building in Orange, according to school officials and two other educators.

Drummond was the first student to earn a doctorate from August Vollmer University, and only one other doctorate has been awarded since, according to John P. Kenney, a former USC professor who founded the school in 1987. Criminologist Arnold Binder questioned the validity of such a degree.

“Students earn a doctorate to teach at a university or to do research at major institutions. Would a degree from August Vollmer qualify for those positions? The fair assessment is it would not qualify for any of them,” said Binder, who earned his doctorate at Stanford and is head of the department of criminology, law and society at UC Irvine.

The degree has become the latest issue in a sometimes-vicious campaign that pits Drummond against Planning Commission Chairman Jim Serles for the 3rd City Council District seat being vacated by Jan Hall. The district takes in Belmont Shore, the Peninsula and Naples communities.

“Never heard of August Vollmer U? Don’t worry, you won’t be seeing them at the Rose Bowl anytime soon,” the latest Serles campaign flyer quips.

Drummond, 53, a retired police commander who forced a heavily favored Serles to a June 5 runoff, defended the integrity of the degree he earned in 1988, one year after the university opened in an Orange County office complex.

“Certainly a degree from Harvard holds more status than one from UC Irvine, and a degree from UC Irvine holds more status than one from August Vollmer,” Drummond said. “I hope that over time . . . August Vollmer will become a very highly respected institution. . . . I am intensely proud of my (work) there.”

But two criminology professors said in interviews that a doctorate from Vollmer would not be accepted for a teaching or lecturing position at any University of California campus.

Drummond is a part-time lecturer at Cal State Long Beach, but his master’s degree from that university is sufficient for that post, a school official said.

“I have a great deal of respect for Jack Kenney as an individual, but not for August Vollmer University,” Binder said. “What they call a doctorate is not what we at other universities call a doctorate.”

Kenney taught public administration courses at USC for 13 years and criminology courses at Cal State Long Beach for 23 years. He is a former president of the Los Angeles Police Commission.

August Vollmer University, named for the renowned criminologist and Berkeley’s chief of police in 1905, has an enrollment of 80 students in its bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate programs. Total tuition for the two-year doctorate in criminology is about $7,000 and requires 50 units of course work, 20 of which are earned from writing a doctoral project, Kenney said.

“That’s about the number of units our students complete in the first year,” Binder said of the four-year doctoral program at UC Irvine.

Doctoral dissertations are supposed to be a scholarly contribution of original research that adds to the body of knowledge within a particular field that is then entered, if approved by an academic committee, into research literature, Binder said.

In criminology, dissertations often involve years of research, a review of hundreds of criminal cases, scores of interviews with judges, prosecutors and victims, and a dozen or more revisions of the finished work, he said.

Drummond’s 137-page body of work draws heavily from his 29 years as a Long Beach police officer. In a section titled “Being a Police Officer: Satisfactions,” he writes:

“The excitement is endless. Newsworthy events are continuously occurring. . . . These include: critical injuries and deaths, spectacular crimes and arrests, high-speed automobile pursuits, officer-involved shootings, riots, bar brawls to break up, other serious fights, court cases, bloody automobile accidents and . . . ALL the bizarre behavior that can be found on the fringes of society. There are seldom dull moments.”

The project cites five interviews conducted as far back as 1973, including one of Kenney, one with a Long Beach police commander and one with a professor of criminal justice at Vollmer.

Kenney said he would match his college’s degree against any from UC Irvine or USC, where he once taught. He added that he has not applied for accreditation with the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges in Oakland because the school has not been in business long enough.

But a representative of the accrediting commission said the university has yet to request even eligibility for accreditation, which then takes four to six years to achieve.

Drummond said he began his doctoral work years ago at USC but failed to finish it within the required deadline. He switched to Vollmer out of his “tremendous respect” for Kenney, who said he founded the university to fill a void in criminology graduate programs.

“The school is his dream,” Drummond said.

* GAP CLOSES IN RUNOFF

Serles, Drummond square off to see who will succeed Jan Hall. J3