With rising enrollment the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign aims to set itself apart from other academies by following an adult learning model instead of military-style training.

“We treat our recruits with dignity and respect, we don’t yell and scream at them, we treat them much like they’re going to be treated at their home agencies,” institute Director Joe Gallo said in an interview.

“And how we expect them to treat people in the streets,” Assistant Director Tod Myers added.

The directors said this teaching style allows recruits the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them.

“If you’re in a militaristic [academy], are you now more worried about getting yelled at because of a uniform issue? And if you’re worried about getting yelled at, you’re not really learning,” Myers said.

The institute approaches training by mimicking real-life situations that may arise on the job. Students practice skills like communication and handling trauma victims to learn strategies for managing tense environments.

“We integrate hands-on, practical scenarios throughout the 16 weeks, so we can give them critical thinking skills on how to interact in various settings,” Gallo said.

Students are divided into small groups of six people to work with instructors acting out scenarios. At times, over 20 facilitators assist in this training, who are leading the lesson or acting out scenes.

“That’s really the backbone of PTI. We have over 100 part-time positions, ranging from civilians to retired to current officers,” Myers said. “That makes sure each one of those officers gets repetition and handles the call, and then they can observe the other officers handling the situation.”

After each scenario plays out, teachers and students engage in discussions on ways to tweak their methods for the best possible outcome.

“That’s where the students learn, is when they’re actually doing it,” Gallo said. “That really sets us apart.”

The institute reports enrollment has increased, with 95 law enforcement students who attended classes this fall. Pre-COVID class sizes numbered in the mid 70s and restrictions during the pandemic led to even smaller class sizes, according to the institute.

As one of Illinois’s eight police training academies, the institute works with a wide range of departments across the state to teach the next generation of officers.

“In order to attend PTI, you have to be hired by either a sheriff’s department or a municipality and then those agencies get to select which of the eight academies they want to use,” Gallo said.

Gallo attended the institute himself in the 1990s after being hired by the Champaign Police Department, which routinely sends recruits to the institute. The police department was unable to provide comment on the institute’s training.

“Our budget is based on the tuition that we generate from those agencies that come to us,” Gallo said.

Gallo said about 10% of that budget comes from the university and state funding. According to the University’s fiscal year 2023 budget summary, the institute received $297,000 last year, with an overall budget of $3 million.

Students at the institute come from a wide range of backgrounds before attending the academy and most have little to no law enforcement experience, Gallo said.

“The goal is by week 16 that they are certified officers and are exposed to over 460 hours of training in various topics that are sprinkled along that course,” Gallo said.

Recruits receive state-mandated training and must pass the state exam, along with the institute’s courses, before working at their agency. Training guidelines are determined by the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board.

“We offer a number of classes that go beyond the required curriculum,” Myers said.

Institute research projects aim to improve training

The institute is the only training facility in Illinois associated with a major university, Gallo said. The institute uses this connection to conduct research with different departments on campus and the results are often incorporated in their curriculum.

Mike Schlosser began working at the institute in 1998 and was the director before retiring in 2023. In his time he conducted a variety of research projects intended to enhance the skills taught to students.

Schlosser authored the institute’s latest research paper on de-escalation training, which was published last year. He combined knowledge from his work as an officer with de-escalation work done by other departments to propose updated training methods.

“A lot of the people you interact with, they’re not really mad at you, they’re mad at the situation,” Schlosser said. “That’s kind of our philosophy, the community policing policy, non-escalation, de-escalation is really big.”

In 2016, Schlosser introduced a course titled “Wrongful Convictions Awareness,” where he brought in the Illinois Innocence Project to teach recruits about the danger of convicting the wrong person. The class was so successful it wound up being adopted into state training guidelines last year.

“We’re open to ideas beyond what the training board requires us to do if we see that it fits with our training philosophy,” Gallo said.

The institute has seven full-time employees and employs two PhD students as research assistants. Jen Whiting, a college writing professor and PhD student, first became involved with the institute after asking to collaborate on research about writing police reports.

“It’s one of the most documented professions in the country, everything that they do has to be done in a very specific way and those documents, as police reports, become legal documents,” Whiting said.

After getting invested in this research, Whiting joined the institute part-time teaching students technical writing skills to improve their reports.

“I don’t review it for the policing actions or the police efficacy, but to help them identify how to strengthen their writing skills,” Whiting said.