Robert Tracy (second from left), the chief of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, joined Police Academy Director Clarence Hines, UMSL Chancellor Kristin Sobolik and Vice Chancellor for Strategic Enrollment and Career Advancement Reggie Hill in finalizing an educational partnership agreement between the department and UMSL’s Advanced Workforce Center in August 2024. Tracy is now serving as an educational consultant with UMSL, engaging with its nationally ranked Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, in a role that began Jan. 1. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)
The University of Missouri–St. Louis is excited to welcome Robert Tracy into the university community. Tracy, who serves as chief of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, is working as an educational consultant, engaging initially with the university’s nationally ranked Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. He began his new role effective Jan. 1.
Tracy, who began his career in law enforcement more than 40 years ago and has worked with the New York and Chicago police departments and then as chief of police in Wilmington, Delaware, will participate in workshops and other educational events with faculty and students in the department. He will be tasked with sharing his leadership expertise to enhance academic programming and foster connections between theory and practice.
Tracy could expand his engagement to include future leadership initiatives beyond the department, including with the Ed G. Smith College of Business.
“UMSL’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice has a long history of engaging with criminal justice organizations across our region to better understand crime as it is experienced in our community,” said Chris Sullivan, the E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor of Youth Crime and Violence and the department’s chair. “Those collaborations, including past work with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, have benefited our students and faculty. We welcome Chief Tracy’s engagement with our department and the community at large.”
This is not the first time Tracy has connected with UMSL since coming to St. Louis to serve as the 36th police commissioner of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in 2022. In 2024, he joined Chancellor Kristin Sobolik in signing an educational partnership agreement between the university and the department that provides educational opportunities through UMSL’s Advanced Workforce Center to assist officers looking to advance their careers through degree completion.
“This partnership is another tool to help us draw potential recruits to SLMPD but allows current officers to continue their education, which will broaden their perspective in day-to-day work,” Tracy said of that partnership. “Pursuing higher education will also improve qualifications during the promotional process as we build officers to become law enforcement leaders for our next generation.”
There is also a rich history of research collaboration between criminology and criminal justice faculty members and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. The late Richard Rosenfeld worked with the department and the city of St. Louis to establish the St. Louis Public Safety Partnership in 2012. He helped design the department’s first randomized controlled field experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of police patrol strategies to reduce crime, work that showed a 50-percent drop in firearm assaults in treated areas compared to the control areas.
In 2018, Curators’ Distinguished Professor Lee Slocum worked collaboratively with the police department and other city partners to study crime enforcement rates in the city.
More recently, Sullivan and Slocum have been providing their expertise in research and data collection to the Save Lives Now! initiative to reduce violent street crime across the region – including in the city of St. Louis – by 20% over the next three years.
When former St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Dan Isom, an UMSL alum, ended his tenure with the department in 2013, he returned to his alma mater to serve as the E. Desmond Lee Professor of Policing and the Community. He spent four years as a full-time faculty member in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice before leaving to become the executive director of the Regional Justice Information Service, or REJIS, but he has remained an adjunct faculty member and also serves on the Chancellor’s Council.
