Wythe Award Winner Seeks to Serve, Protect Through Education
Former law-enforcement professional and trainer directs growing BVU program
Dr. Richard Riner, Assistant Professor of Criminology/Criminal Justice, is the recipient of the 36th George Wythe Award, Buena Vista University’s highest honor for excellence in teaching, announced during BVU’s Employee Recognition Celebration on Wednesday.
Riner, a five-year BVU veteran, has helped oversee a criminology and criminal justice program that has grown by 50 percent during his five years on campus.
“The growth in the program has happened for a variety of reasons,” he says. “BVU Admissions is doing a great job of getting prospective students on campus. Once they’re here, we have the opportunity to show those students and their parents our program and what it means for their future.”
Riner says he’s had parents ask if they can enroll in the program, too.
Second, he says, funding from BVU benefactors has allowed Riner and Dr. Stephanie Hays-Angstrom, Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, to create the Center for Criminal Justice Studies and its crime simulator and crime-scene rooms, where training sessions for students take place in a safe environment.
“The crime-scene rooms and the simulator are gap fillers,” Riner says. “We take what students learn in class and give students chances to apply those concepts before they’re in real-life situations. We work repeatedly on critical thinking skills in a simulator, which is a safe, controlled setting. When a mistake is made, we stop, we diagnose what happened, and we learn from it.”
The premise is that when a BVU student is hired upon their graduation, they’ve been tested in hundreds of situations and have dissected all sorts of snap decisions and judgements that must be made in the course of a shift.
Riner has experience in those settings as he comes from a law-enforcement background. The Arkansas native worked as a cabinet maker for eight years after graduating from high school. Then, he says, his “overdeveloped sense of justice” won him over and led him to apply for a spot within a local police academy. He finished third in his class of approximately 50 future law-enforcement officials.
“In my first years with the police force, there were weeks that I worked all three shifts (morning, midday, and night) and also did a split shift,” he says. “Whenever they needed someone to fill a shift, that’s where I was put.”
Riner enjoyed how unpredictable a day in law enforcement could be. “One day you might be working with someone on a parking complaint,” he says. “The next day, or the next hour, you might be involved in a high-speed pursuit.”
When a lieutenant sought candidates to become a field-training instructor with the local department, Riner’s name was suggested. He ended up going through training and discovered a passion for his new role. “I learned more by teaching,” he says.
Eventually, he became an academy instructor and went on to earn a Ph.D. in criminology from the University of Texas at Dallas. Five years ago, he and his wife, Marian Riner, came to BVU. Three years ago, Marian became a member of the BVU faculty as a Field Director and Assistant Professor of Social Work. She was one of the 2022 Wythe Award finalists as well, joining Dr. Lisa Mellmann, Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Sciences, and Jeremy Lawson, Instructor of Developmental Mathematics.
Dr. Richard Riner, a Wythe finalist for three years, says he loves working at BVU and the opportunity to grow closer to local law-enforcement professionals.
“I love working at BVU,” he says. “I’m incredibly grateful for Dr. Dixee Bartholomew-Feis (Dean of the School of Liberal Arts), as she listens with patience to some of my crazy ideas,” he says. “I’m also indebted to Dr. Hays-Angstrom as, without her, I wouldn’t be here in this program. She, too, is a great listener and always steers me in the right direction.”
Riner lauds Storm Lake Chief of Police Chris Cole as well, noting how Cole and his progressive department work hard in reaching out to BVU and members of the criminology and criminal justice program. The Storm Lake Police Department has used the simulator on campus in training exercises.
That relationship, according to Riner, contributes to a well-trained local force that supports BVU students while working to protect campus and the community. A benefit, he says, shows in the placement rate of recent BVU graduates in an all-important field.
“Every recent graduate from our program, at least those I’m in contact with, has a job in the justice field or a related field,” he says. “And I’ve got 20 emails right now from agencies who are begging for BVU students to apply.”
It all adds up to a Wythe winner in 2022.
“The Wythe Award is humbling and surreal to me,” Dr. Richard Riner says of the $30,000 stipend and a sabbatical through which he may pursue professional development and research to improve the program. “It’s a sizeable investment for the University for me as a faculty member. I know I need to be a good steward so that, ultimately, BVU, our students, and our community, will benefit.”
The George Wythe Award, named for an early US educator whose students included Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, James Monroe, and Henry Clay, is endowed through a gift from the late BVU Life Trustees Drs. Paul and Vivian McCorkle, BVU Class of 1959.
BVU President Brian Lenzmeier announced several awards in the annual program on Wednesday, including the Education for Service staff honor earned by Registered Nurse Lorie Stanton, BVU Director of Health Services, who was lauded for her efforts in successfully guiding the University community through the rigors of the COVID-19 pandemic.