March 17, 2022

Before Paige Keningale had ever set foot in Canada, the PhD candidate at the University of Surrey in England had already heard of Seneca’s Honours Bachelor of Crime & Intelligence Analysis (BCIA) degree program — the first such degree offered at an Ontario postsecondary institution.

So, when her university gave her a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity through the British government’s Turing Scheme to study and work abroad, Ms. Keningale knew exactly where she wanted to go.

“I came to Seneca because of the things you are doing here,” she said. “Your students are learning about the geographic information systems and how to map. They are learning how to present their findings. And they are learning these things at such an early stage of their career. They are going to stand out from the crowd.”

Ms. Keningale is in her last year of doctoral study. She is visiting Seneca for three months and working closely with Dr. Camie Condon, Program Co-ordinator of BCIA.

One of the initiatives Ms. Keningale has been focusing on is Project End the Traffick: Preventing Sex Trafficking Through Evidence-Based Analysis.

The research project recently received $10,000 from the King Township Women of Influence Giving Circle. The project is using open-source data and analytical techniques to identify indicators for those who are at high risk of being victims of sex trafficking. Those populations include 2SLGBTQIA+, Indigenous and homeless people.

The project will also provide intelligence and background information designed for use by front-line officers.

“This is the first time I’ve worked on something like this, and it hit home,” Ms. Keningale said. “You are looking at someone’s child and trying to determine the situation. The volume of what appears to be human trafficking in York Region alone is shocking.”

With data from regional police services and Public Safety Canada, Ms. Keningale is now working with a BCIA student to create heat maps that identify regional trafficking trends along the Highway 401 corridor.

In addition, she has written grant applications for the project and submitted scholarly articles for publication and conference presentations.

While the research won’t begin in earnest until after Friday, April 1, when Ms. Keningale is scheduled to wrap up her visit in Canada and return to the U.K., she will continue to work on the project with Dr. Condon and BCIA students.

During her time with Seneca, Ms. Keningale has also been engaged in developing international pathway connections for student exchange programs and building relationships with master’s programs in Ontario to create opportunities for mentorship and collaborative research.

Overall, she says her experience at Seneca so far has been eye-opening.

“Seneca is providing the unique skills students need to be successful in law enforcement, and I wish we had a program like this in the U.K.,” Ms. Keningale said. “Ultimately, you are handing over the students when they graduate and saying, ‘I’ve trained them. You can put them into a room and have them analyze the data.’ That fascinates me.”

In the U.K., she explains, the teaching style is more traditional, with lectures and note-taking.

“Our universities don’t have anything like this,” she said.

That’s why the BICA program is situated at a polytechnic and not a university, according to Dr. Condon.

“Of course, we teach the theory, but the focus of our curriculum is to get students into the lab,” she said. “They are doing what analysts are doing in the industry, and often we are told by companies that our interns can do things their 20-year veterans can’t.”

Dr. Condon has encouraged her students to reach out to Ms. Keningale to network and ask questions.

“It’s been really valuable for our students to have Paige visiting us,” she said. “Expanding their world beyond Ontario with exposure to different styles of teaching and policing will make them more well-rounded and employable.”