Exiting seniors should exhibit comprehensive knowledge of key concepts provided during their educational experience

Graduating seniors will exhibit comprehensive knowledge of core criminal justice course work.

Each semester, all graduating seniors are asked to complete an exit exam, on the SHSU Blackboard academic support system, that  provides faculty a means of assessing students' comprehension and retention on key concepts provided to them during their educational experience. The 60-item Exit Exam, created by faculty, assesses learning in seven core areas.

The average on each competency area: (1) Criminal Law; (2) Corrections; (3) Law Enforcement; (4) Courts; (5) Theory/Criminology (6) Research Methods/Statistics, and (7) Diversity within the Criminal Justice System will be at least 75% for graduating seniors taking the exit exam, except for the average on Theory/Criminology.  Last year this average was below 70%. We hope to see this average rise this year.

Graduating seniors (191 out of 442) achieved an average of 67% on the overall exit exam and between 57% and 73% on the component areas representing the undergraduate curriculum.

Senior exit exam scores for the 2012-2013 academic year indicated that students had the following averages across the six core competency areas: Criminal Law - 73%, Corrections - 70%, Policing and Law Enforcement - 71%, Courts - 69%, Criminology/Theory - 57 %, Research Methods/Statistics - 72%, Crime, Justice, and Social Diversity - 71%. Results indicated that the graduating seniors scored at or above 70% on all competency areas except for Courts and Criminology/Theory.

For the first time since we have been administering the exit exam, our students fell a little short of our 70% average score criterion. However, there seemed to be several new items on the exit exam that were problematic. We also had a low response rate; less than half of our graduating seniors completed the exit exam. In the next academic year we will closely examine our exit exam items and attempt to obtain a higher completion rate.  

Development of Writing and Research Skills

Students will demonstrate competence in their writing and research skills.

Undergraduate criminal justice students will develop a scholarly research paper proposal in their core required Research Methods course (CRIJ 3378). Writing and research skills will be scored by a rubric agreed upon by a faculty committee. Each professor will utilize this rubric when grading the student research paper proposals.  These guidelines include areas of organization, content, quality of proposed research, hypothesis construction and writing.

The majority of students will score at 75% or above on the research paper proposal scoring rubric.

The 175 students, out of the 774 students who completed the Research Methods course (CRIJ 3378), were assessed by the scoring rubric and scored an average of 75% overall on the writing and research paper review. Their total average score was 3.8 out of 5. The overall score on the writing and research skills rubric is comprised of nine areas (average scores in parentheses): Relevance to the field (4.2), contribution to academic debate (3.7), structure/organization of the paper (3.7), writing and grammar (3.5), appropriateness of the research/study method (3.7), abstract information (4.0), construction of hypotheses (3.6), whether the importance of the study is made obvious (3.9), and adequate and correctly cited references (3.6). The students scored well in each area with averages between 72% and 84%. Lower scores were found in the areas of writing and grammar usage, hypothesis construction, and references.

Although the students performed well and met the goal with an overall average of 75%, we are still missing assessment from many of our students taking this course. Most sections of the Research Methods course did not utilize the rubric. Approximately 240 students were not required to complete a research paper because the course was taught in the auditorium. However, there remains approximately 350 students that were not assessed.

Increase the quality and quantity of the writing and research skills of our undergraduates. We will also meet with the Research Methods instructors to discuss and ensure the use of the developed scoring rubric for the continued assessment of our student’s writing and research skills.