The faculty of the Division of Criminal Justice are committed to providing criminal justice students the highest quality educational experience possible. Criminal Justice faculty are committed to providing students the opportunity to acquire knowledge, skills, and abilities that will enable them to pursue their highest academic and professional aspirations. Faculty are further committed to strengthening student intellectual development by modeling an ethic devoted to lifelong learning. To do so, the division must continually engage in assessment of student outcomes and division practices and procedures in support of students and apply the results of these evaluations to our program content, teaching and student support services.

Principles underlying the development and implementation of an assessment plan in the Criminal Justice Division.

1. The primary purpose of outcomes assessment is to enhance teaching and learning, rather than the promotion of accountability to higher authorities in the University.
2. All aspects of the creation, modification, and implementation of an assessment plan shall be reviewed and approved by a majority of the regular members of the full-time faculty of the Criminal Justice Division.
3. Outcomes assessment is concerned with the performance of the Division as a whole, rather than the performance of individual faculty members or students.
4. Outcomes assessment is not concerned with the evaluation of individual students for purposes of determining their status.
5. Outcomes assessment is not concerned with the evaluation of individual faculty members for purposes of making personnel decisions, including decisions regarding tenure, promotion, or salary increases.
6. Raw data generated by the outcomes assessment process is available only to the members of the Division of Criminal Justice.
7. The goals of the outcomes assessment program is to create a basis for the integration of assessment into ongoing educational endeavors using a variety of measures of performance to assist in the improvement of the criminal justice program.
8. Student participation in the outcomes assessment process is an important part of the assessment plan.

Assessing Student Outcomes

One important means of ensuring these processes is through the development and implementation of a student outcomes assessment plan. Criminal Justice faculty recognize that assessment efforts should flow through the university's mission statement and that the purpose of assessment is improvement of the university's programs. Faculty further recognize that assessment of academic achievement will be guided by faculty and that the process itself should utilize multiple measures and not rely on a single instrument or activity. Results acquired from the assessment process will be used for decision-making and the assessment process will itself be evaluated. The results of assessment activities are to be viewed as a means rather than an end.

GOALS:

Program goals and objectives are addressed within three critical areas of student performance and development:

1. What a student knows.
2. What a student can do.
3. What a student cares about.

What A Student Knows - Goals

Graduates of the CSUS Criminal Justice Program should possess a knowledge base that concerns the areas of: (these are reflective of the criminal justice curriculum core)

a. criminal justice and juvenile justice processes (law, crime, and the administration of justice)
b. criminology (the causes of crime, typologies, offenders, and victims)
c. law enforcement (police administration, crime investigation, leadership, problem-oriented policing, community policing, police and community relations, planning ethics, and the legal use of discretion)
d. law adjudication (criminal law, prosecution, defenses to crimes, evidence, legal procedure, court procedure)
e. corrections (incarceration, treatment and legal rights of offenders, community-based corrections)

What A Student Can Do - Goals

Graduates of the CSUS Criminal Justice Program should be able to:

a. analyze information
b. think critically
c. read effectively
d. speak effectively
e. write effectively
f. research effectively
g. solve problems

What A Student Cares About - Personal Growth and Citizenship - Goals

Graduates of the CSUS Criminal Justice Program should have developed:

a. interpersonal and leadership skills
b. an acute sense of one's personal identity and potential
c. cultural awareness, flexibility, and sensitivity to fully appreciate the values and differences of a diverse society
d. the ability to recognize the rights, responsibilities, and privileges of a citizen

OBJECTIVES

Objectives are brief, clear statements that describe the desired learning outcomes of instruction. Attention is focused on the specific types of performances that students are expected to demonstrate at the end of instruction.

The following are examples of objectives that relate to goals defining "What A Criminal Justice Graduate Can Do."

Goal: CSUS graduates should be able to analyze information

Specific Objectives - CSUS Criminal Justice graduates should be able to:

a. Identify and examine a complex whole on the basis of its respective parts and on the relationship between those parts.
b. Read, interpret and use criminal justice and criminological data skillfully.
c. Read, interpret, and comprehend, research reports, and identify the strengths and weaknesses of these reports.
d. Adopt and express a scientific orientation in which everything is open to further testing, reinterpretation, or refutation.
e. Read, interpret, and restate the meaning of legal statutes, associated case law, and legal dispositions.

Goal: CSUS graduates should be able to think critically

Specific Objectives - CSUS Criminal Justice graduates should be able to:

a. Evaluate (assess the credibility of communication and the strengths of its claims and arguments) criminological explanations and criminal justice policies.
b. Identify and interpret (understand and express the meaning of) ethical problems they may confront in criminal justice practice.
c. Identify and evaluate the assumptions underlying criminal justice policies and assess their empirical basis.
d. Identify and avoid errors in reasoning, such as provincialism, overgeneralization, and emotional identification relative to argument.
e. Apply deductive and inductive approaches to the construction of theories to account for crime and justice phenomena.
f. Evaluate criminal justice programs on the basis of the relative efficiency and effectiveness of the program's processes and outcomes.

Goal: CSUS Criminal Justice graduates should be able to read effectively

Specific Objectives - CSUS Criminal Justice graduates should be able to:

a. Read, comprehend, and evaluate information contained in texts, technical reports, instruction manuals, computer media, data in graphs and charts, periodicals, journal articles, and memos.
b. Read for content by identifying themes, recognizing relationships, understanding the use of devices such as metaphor, irony, and humor, conceptualizing abstractions, and recognizing confusing, vague, and ambiguous language.
c. Read for analysis by identifying the explicit and implied features of the text, especially the arguments or positions that put forth a conclusion.
d. Read for evaluation by judging and assessing the credibility of a text and the strength of claims or positions.
e. Read for inference and reasoning to form new knowledge, draw conclusions, solve problems, explain, decide and/or predict.
f. Read with reflection to monitor one's comprehension and to correct one's process of thinking.
Goal: CSUS Criminal Justice graduates should be able to speak effectively
Specific Objectives - CSUS Criminal Justice graduates should be able to:
a. Demonstrate mastery of the processes of basic speech communication (skills relating to the selection and arrangement of elements to produce spoken messages.
b. Demonstrate mastery of interpersonal and group communication (skills relating to the management of human relations)
c. Demonstrate mastery of communication codes (skills relating to the ability to use and understand spoken English and non-verbal signs)
d. Demonstrate mastery of oral message evaluation (skills relating to the evaluation of oral messages and their effects)
e. Distinguish and avoid language-indicating bias.
f. Outline key points and sub-points of their spoken messages.
g. Use pronunciation, grammar, and articulation appropriate for designated audience.
h. Adapt to changes in audience characteristics.
i. Support arguments with relevant and adequate evidence.
j. Restate assumptions, evidence, and conclusions of an argument.

Goal: CSUS Criminal Justice graduates should be able to write effectively.

Specific Objectives - CSUS Criminal Justice graduates should be able to de fine, explain, criticize, propose, recommend, review, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate.

Their writing should be characterized by:

a. well developed main idea
b. major points developed with multi-level elaboration
c. relevant generalizations
d. clear organizational plan that is suited to the topic
e. development of all parts of the composition with no digressions
f. use of vocabulary specific to the purpose of the paper
g. compliance with the conventions of grammar, punctuation, formatting, and spelling.

Process Assessment

The assessment process should also address how well the overall operation of the division fulfills the needs of students. Performance should be evaluated in the following areas:
1. Academic advising
2. Career advising
3. Curriculum
4. Course scheduling
5. Student support and incorporation into university community

Feedback, Incorporation and Reassessment

Assessment exists to allow organization to recognize the need for change and adaptation and to assist in planning and executing needed change and adaptation. The assessment and adaptation process should be an ongoing one that incorporates feedback loops. The division of criminal justice depends upon the Assessment and Academic Standards, Curriculum and Personnel Committees, coordinated by the division chair, to facilitate such change, but most changes require approval by the majority of the faculty members. In addition, some changes and adaptation perceived as desirable are not possible due to resource limits, university policies or labor agreements. Others can only be suggested to individual faculty, but not imposed due to the nature of faculty autonomy. The dispersed nature of the responsibility and authority combined with a lack of effective mechanisms for rewarding or sanctioning non-compliance imposes severe limits upon the capacity to assure implementation of any plan. The lack of any single external accrediting body and the presence of multiple disciplines within the division combine with the size of the faculty to impose real limits on the level of voluntary consensus on objectives and means among the faculty.

In spite of these structural limitations the division maintains an active program to examine and update our operations on an ongoing basis. Teaching cohorts meet annually and review all learning objectives, texts and course syllabi for the course cluster. Changes are recommended and referred to the Assessment and Academic Standards Committee, which approves any changes in learning objectives or other universal mandates. In addition, the Assessment and Academic Standards Committee has initiated periodic assessments using a variety of methods including focus groups and student surveys to assess division performance. The results will be used to recommendation changes in policy, procedures, future hiring, curriculum and student support services to the chair, appropriate committees and the division faculty where appropriate.

In addition, the division will begin administering pre-tests to students entering the major and post-tests to seniors in the capstone in the 04-05 academic year. The Assessment and Academic Standards Committee shall utilize the results from these examinations, including writing samples, to determine the level of student knowledge and skills and identify weaknesses in student performance. Based upon this information the Curriculum and Personnel committees may recommend specific remedies in curriculum content and/or future hiring to the division faculty.