Mr. Jim Love

B.S. in Sociology, Class of 1966; Associate Professor (Retired) and former Chair of the Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice. Began working at Lamar University in 1976

Interviewed by Vidisha Barua Worley on 03/30/2023

‘I came back to Lamar in January 1976 as far as being employed there. I had attended Lamar University and got my baccalaureate degree there in 1966. Lamar served me well and gave me a great education. I went to Law School and joined the Bar. I had a very good time as a student. I was in a fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon. I enjoyed my college a lot. Overall, my undergraduate experience was really good. I was hired at Lamar at that time for police training and education, which would be LIT now, continuing education and vocational college. Lamar was also the regional police academy that served the Port Arthur, Hardin and Jefferson Counties. We trained officers. Lamar had the police academy. I helped Lamar transition from the vocational side over to the academic side. They were beginning a criminal justice program. They began the program a couple of years before I got here. I didn’t know much about it. I was running a university police department out in Odessa, TX. After I went to law school, I went to work as a city cop in Austin and then at the DA’s office and then got hired to go out to set up a new university police department in University of Texas Permian Basin. I came back to Beaumont because it was a little closer to home. This job came open. I worked as part professor, part trainer. I thought I would do that for a few years and then go do something else, and 41 years later, I am still here. Lamar kept the academy for a few years and eventually it did go back to LIT. The Criminal Justice program grew to be a fairly good-sized program. I was the department chair in the early 90s. It’s a bad job. You have to go to a zillion meetings. You don’t have time to do what you really want to do. All you want to do is teach students in class. That kind of becomes secondary to all your other duties. I was very happy to pass the torch to someone else.'