Faculty Spotlight: Karen Rivard

It’s no secret that police work can be draining, but Karen Rivard considers it an honor to assist people during some of the worst days of their lives. “It’s very rewarding to be there as the calm person who knows what to do in a crisis situation,” Rivard said.

After 23 years on the job, she still finds it thrilling to solve crimes and humbling to help citizens during bleak moments. “I love meeting people. I get to meet people from all walks of life, not always in the best circumstances. People’s worst day is when I seem to arrive. It’s rewarding to be able to help them along,” she said.

Rivard graduated from the first Police Academy Tracking Program that law enforcement instructor Jeff Shouldice taught in 1994. Today, she is an instructor for the 16-week-long police academy and also teaches for the college’s law enforcement program.

She’s also a detective for Kalamazoo’s Department of Public Safety (KDPS). By the time she graduated from college, the Detroit native had decided that her dream job would be with KDPS. Because there was a hiring freeze in effect at that time, she was put on a wait list. She applied to 60 police departments within an hour of Kalamazoo and landed her first job in the city of Holland. She served as a patrol officer there for three years and was hired to start work in Kalamazoo just three days after her Holland contract ended.

“I started out as a patrol officer doing lots of investigations and that helped me later in Kalamazoo,” Rivard said. In Kalamazoo, public safety officers are cross trained as firefighters, so she spent much of that first year fighting fires. “It’s rare that you do both, but I was excited by that,” she said.

Later, she worked in undercover vice investigations. “I was pretty fortunate back then that I got to do a lot of proactive investigative work,” she said. She also served on a Tactical Response Unit. The small team was not responsible for dispatch calls so they could focus on high crime areas in the city where drugs, prostitution and gambling persisted. “We were empowered to investigate and clean up the problems,” Rivard said.

Rivard also served on the Kalamazoo Valley Enforcement Team’s (KVET) drug unit where she was part of an investigative team that worked to dismantle mid-level distributors of drugs. In 2004, she was selected to serve in a grant-funded position as a task force officer with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Rivard loves investigative work. “This work can be thankless, but I love being able to follow a case from inception to the end. Nothing compares to giving closure to the victim,” she said.

Rivard was promoted to detective in 2010 and she’s been a major crimes detective ever since. She is also a task force officer with of the Criminal Investigations Division. “My favorite thing about it is that it’s different every day,” she said. “I’m a learner. I like to learn something new or learn how to do something better. My job is always different and that keeps it fun and fresh.”

Rivard also loves teaching. “In 2002, Jeff Shouldice (law enforcement faculty) saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself,” she recalls. “He asked me to teach in the police academy and I reluctantly said yes. It’s helped me to develop a whole additional professional side. I’ve been able to explore and learn and grow. It’s made me a better mentor. I love it as much as I love being a police officer.”

In the fall, Rivard will be teaching LEN 132, Public Safety Report Writing. At the police academy, she’ll also teach Report Writing and Responding to Crimes in Progress Sections