Alumni Profiles

B.S., criminal justice

Chief of Police, Kernersville, N.C.

In September, Ken Gamble ’04 started his new job as chief of police in Kernersville, N.C., supervising 68 officers and 88 total employees. Though Gamble is a career police officer, he says he might not have gotten to this position had he not gone to college as an adult for a bachelor’s degree.

“Going into it,” he says, “it did not take me long to realize how important having a higher education was. Not only for advancement, but you know, when you’re working not just toward responding to the problems of the community, but actually trying to solve problems, you have to have a higher level of thinking for that.”

Gamble earned an associate degree at GTCC in 1996 and enrolled at Guilford a few years later. At the time he was assigned to Kernersville’s detectives division, allowing him to work mostly during the days and attend classes at night. He earned a B.S. in criminal justice, and is currently pursuing a Master of Public Administration degree from Appalachian State University.

“What I was looking for was a college experience that would really challenge me,” he says. “I really wanted to go to a college where 1) it was going to be challenging, but 2) the name on that degree meant something. Guilford lived up to those expectations. Very challenging curriculum, again, very writing-centered.”

“Guilford really allowed me to polish my writing skills. And I use those skills just about every day. It’s a fantastic school, a fantastic experience.”

For Gamble, the timing of attending college was perfect. He already had more than 10 years experience as a police officer in Winston-Salem and Kernersville when he began to look at law enforcement academically. “It’s nice to have the practical experience of a law enforcement officer and then see how the theoretical aspects fit in, and whether or not they actually answer the questions that the researchers say that they answer,” Gamble says.

“I think law enforcement can learn a lot from academia as far as research,” he says. “It makes you a better thinker. But it also makes you a better consumer of some of this data that’s floating around. It makes you think about, well, how did they get this information? How did they operationalize their variables? Did they have a large enough sample? Everybody likes to throw statistics around, but I think [research] makes you a better consumer of those statistics and knowing what place they have.”

For instance, during the course of his career Gamble says he’s seen what he calls a “paradigm shift” in the way law enforcement approaches cases of domestic violence, largely because research on the issue gave them a greater understanding of its causes and impact.  

Gamble says he feels that earning a degree enhanced the skills he’d already developed as a police officer, in addition to the professional incentive. “I see higher learning as being very advantageous, but I see it more as having an intrinsic value that’s much more than just what we’re getting out of it,” he says.

“It’s about how you actually look at problems, take them apart and look at the pieces and figure out how you’re going to address future problems. That’s where higher education really gives us a benefit.”

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