Michael Moreschi is in his second year as Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Brevard College. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, attended undergrad at Rollins College in Winter Park, FL, and earned his master’s from UCF, in Orlando, Florida.
Moreschi had reached detective level at Orlando Police Department (OPD) by the time he started his bachelor’s degree. He said, “I was a bad student. If I was going to get a degree I couldn’t branch out, it had to be in my field.” After he got his master’s, he was working a high profile missing persons case, and while looking into the victim’s past, he contacted her past boyfriend, a professor at UCF. Moreschi said, “He wasn’t a suspect or anything, but I interviewed him and mentioned I just got my masters.” The connection landed Moreschi an adjunct teaching job at UCF. He said, “I had never taught at a higher level so it allowed me to dip my toe in and see if it was something I wanted to do when I retire. So, I was an active homicide detective teaching criminal investigations one night a week.”
Moreschi eventually retired from OPD, when he realized he was “done.” Moreschi said, “You definitely have a shelf life. That was my 14th year working homicide cases, so I wanted to teach full-time.” When the position at Brevard College came open, it seemed like a natural fit because his wife, Jane had graduated from nearby Montreat. Their grown sons were attending UCF, so they decided to make the change. He went from teaching classes of 100 students where he tried hard to learn everyone’s name to a different challenge at Brevard college. He said, “Here I have students, especially in the Senior Capstone class, who have been in my classes three or four times. My jokes get stale. I have to come up with original material. It’s a lot of pressure.”
In order to expose students to a real world experience, Moreschi asks permission from the victim’s families to use real cases he worked as a detective. No one has ever turned him down. He said, “A lot of the families are happy to help because they know the case details are being used to teach students who will go into the field.” This experiential hands-on application of real life cases allows students to grapple with and reflect on what they will be faced with in the field.
Moreschi also emphasizes internships in criminal justice as a way to get a job. He said, “There are so many good reasons to get internships and there’s not a bad one.” The criminal justice program at Brevard College is one of the most popular and Moreschi said, “ I see a high percentage of graduates going into the field. And I think we are doing a good job of getting them prepared and it’s rewarding to see them succeed.”