Upon completion of the undergraduate program students will possess skills relevant to employment fields associated with the study of political science.

Students will be able to analyze and present empirical data, explain key concepts of research design, and write coherent reports and research papers.

POLS 3379 Research and Writing is a required course. Faculty members who teach the course will receive and review 5 randomly selected papers POLS 3379 courses. Faculty members will review the papers using a rubric. Papers will be scored on a scale of 1 - 5 with 5 being the highest.

We expect that 75% of the written assignments selected for committee review will receive a score of three or better.

80% of the papers reviewed by the committee were scored at or above 3. However, faculty reviewing assignments felt that the nature of the written assignments scored varied a great deal, thus rendering assessment across POLS 3379 sections somewhat difficult. For example, one set of assignments emphasized key concepts of reseach design over analysis and presentation of empirical data. Faculty teaching 3379 agreed that the the content of POLS 3379 courses needs to be more consistent across sections. For example, similiar assignments, class activities, etc. This will help improve the assessment process and allow faculty to determine what set of skills students are lacking and how best to improve students' skills.

Faculty teaching POLS 3379 agreed to establish more course content consistency across 3379. This will allow faculty to engage in more thorough assessment of students' skills and provide faculty the information needed to determine how best to improve students' skills.

Build students' knowledge of government and politics, citizenship skills, and civic engagement

Throughout their enrollment, students will explore the following themes in a national and international context: the structure and operation of various forms of government, political philosophies, informal and formal political organizations and actors, public policies, and political behavior

Each field of study will be assigned a team of 2 faculty members who have expertise in the particular field. Each semester the individual teams will receive and review 5 randomly selected papers from an upper division course in their respective fields. Faculty members from each subfield will evaluate the papers using the attached rubric. The papers will be scored on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the highest.

We expect that at least 75% of the essays will score a 3 or above.  This will represent an increase of over 5% from the previous year.

Although the procedures used to assess student knowledge of government and politics produced results in the past, faculty support for the procedures has never been strong (i.e., faculty abide by the procedures but question the effectiveness of the results). This year faculty lack of support for assessment procedures resulted in explicit discussions (both in department meetings and one on one faculty member meetings with chair) about the need to change the existing assessment procedures. One area of concern for faculty, obtaining and sharing randomly selected papers from courses, proved problematic in AY 2014/2015. year. Evaluation of students' knowledge is best done using an assignment given at the end of the course. However, the current assessment procedures require sharing written papers and not all faculty relied on written papers for final assignments. Thus, assessment data for AY 2014/2015 was not obtained.

Althougth faculty objected to current assessment procedures, they expressed a willingness to adopt new procedures. These new procedures will be adopted and implemented in fall 2015.