“I’ve defended clients in all types of criminal cases, including murders and assaults,” he says. “I’ve found  that my sociological training is invaluable in understanding human behavior and resolving conflicts within our judicial system.”

And so did Karen Frederick, chair of the Saint Anselm sociology department, who met Smith at a sociology conference in Boston in 1999 where she was interviewing candidates for faculty openings. She offered Smith a position that fall to teach sociology, statistics (to nurses), criminology and law and society. He was awarded tenure in 2004. His latest projects include two books-one on wrongful convictions with criminal justice professor Jack Humphrey and another on Boston’s “Big Dig.”

“Mike Smith has tremendous energy, initiative and drive,” says Fr. Augustine Kelly, O.S.B., dean of the college. “He came to Saint Anselm College as a non tenure track professor, but once we learned more about him we knew he was someone we wanted to keep around.”

Smith’s experiences and insights into the legal process and social justice system are a valuable asset for his students as well.

After September 11, 2001, he developed a course on terrorism, and now teaches a popular course on the sociology of terrorism and genocide. Last year he presented a paper, since accepted for publication in the International Journal of Learning, at an international conference in Havana, Cuba, on teaching about terrorism and genocide.

To make the course more meaningful, Smith has incorporated service learning with the English for New Americans program as a requirement. “Students get to work with survivors of genocide, particularly Bosnian Muslims and those from Rwanda and Sudan,” he says. “Students keep diaries, which helps bring the course concepts to life.”

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