The Ohio School Resource Officers Association recently selected Officer Chuck Collier, a school resource officer at Dublin Jerome High School, as their School Resource Officer of the Year.
Dublin Police Sgt. Tim Hosterman nominated Officer Collier for this award over the seven other resource officers in the district,
“[B]ecause he embodies everything that we ask our school resource officers to be… He gets it. He is very, very invested in his school and his staff. He really cares. That’s one of those things that really stands out with him.”
Collier, a 20-year plus veteran with the Dublin Police Department, first applied for his current position back in 2013 after speaking with his pastor. During their conversation, his pastor pushed him to consider the position based on the sheer number of people he could help influence for the better – the 1,700 or so students at the school, or the handful of people he would interact with per day while on patrol.
“Looking at it from that perspective made it pretty easy to show me that this was what I wanted to do,” Collier said.
Collier, a member of the Dublin Police Department’s Community Education Unit, also helps with a number of special programs at the school, like teaching parents ways to prevent substance abuse issues through presentations he gives for the Dublin Adolescents and Community Together coalition and by speaking about bullying to health classes in school.
Recently, he has helped create a new “beyond driver’s ed” class that includes a four-hour session in a classroom to discuss safe driving habits before giving students the chance for a one-on-one session in a driving simulator with an officer.
According to Jerome Principal Dustin Miller, Collier is often approached by students looking for advice and answers to their questions. In some cases, some students are even more comfortable speaking with him than with their teachers.
“He has sort of this mixture of dad-meets-police-officer-meets-teacher presence,” Miller said.
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Even with all of the recent adulation from faculty and students, Collier quickly and humbly reminds people that he’s only doing his job. No matter what he’s doing to support the students at the school, whether it’s asking about their game the night before or if he’s checking up with a student at lunch to make sure they’re okay, he just wants the students to know that he’s there to support them.
“If that’s one of the reasons I won, then great, because that means I’m doing something right,” he said.
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