Youth, Communities, Nature
Jason Hyland is a retired police lieutenant at the University of Connecticut Police Department with over 23 years of experience in policing. He lead the agency’s Community Outreach Unit as well as a matrixed team of public education and engagement officers across the state. Prior to serving UConn, he was a police officer at the University of Arizona Police Department in Tucson, a corrections officer for the State of Arizona, and an adventure educator in camps and resorts. During his police career he served in patrol, special victim’s unit, professional standards, and community outreach capacities. His expertise includes stakeholder relationship building, problem solving policing models, collaborative governance strategies, public education and engagement, event management, policy research and writing, and individual and organizational community policing strategies. He specializes in curriculum and educational program development, public information campaign development, classroom facilitation and instruction, managing program goals and objectives, and program assessment.
He has been recognized for creating a Police Community Challenge wherein groups of community members and police officers engage in a day-long sequence of challenge course activities focused on reducing negative perceptions of “other” and building strong interpersonal relationships and problem solving skills that enhance public confidence in their law enforcement agents and provide officers with greater skills for community engagement. This initiative is one of only a few such programs in the nation and engages in independent data collection to measure program efficacy. It has been featured at a national conference of outdoor recreation and experiential education.
He has presented at educational and adventure conferences. In 2019 he and Mark Flynn presented Police Community Challenge: Pre-emptive Community Building to Combat Negative Stereotypes and Biases at the joint conference of Association of Outdoor Recreation & Association of Experiential Education in Spokane, WA. In 2019 he also presented Adventure-based Programs: Activities that help kids build social emotional competencies at the Annual After School Conference of the CT After School Network in Hartford, CT.
His education and facilitation history extends over thirty years and includes over 2,500 hundred hours of direct facilitation and instruction for well over 15,000 participants in a variety of outdoor, classroom, and workshop settings . A lifelong leaner, he recently finished a Bachelor's Degree. 30 years in the making, he completed his B.S. in General Studies with a focus in Child & Youth Development.