All Criminal Justice B.A. students are required to complete a Portfolio in their senior year. The Portfolio is a collection of work completed in several classes that represent the students’ accumulation of knowledge. Specifically the work included in the Portfolio will be connected to the Learning Outcomes for the Criminal Justice Major.
Process:
I – Working with your Advisor
At the completion of 96 hours of course work the student will meet with his or her advisor to discuss the selection of work for inclusion in the portfolio. Upon the completion of 108 hours the student submits the portfolio for evaluation. (Through consultation with the advisor, the Portfolio may be incomplete upon submission at this time in anticipation of inclusion of work being completed in the final semester.)
II – What to Include in the Portfolio
Each Portfolio must include a minimum of 5 (clean) copies of assignments completed in other courses.
Assignments are defined as:
- Major research papers
- Take-home exams
- A set of lab assignments or responses (10+ pages)
- Other major course work (i.e., grant writing project)
Suggested courses from which to use assignments:
- ENG 201
- ENG 315
- SOC 430
- SOC 400
- CRJ 200
- CRJ/SOC 3XX
Each chosen assignment will be used to exemplify specific Learning Outcome(s) (see Appendix A). Students are not to revise previous work; rather the assignment should be included as it was originally submitted.
Included with the (clean) copy of the assignment will be a cover sheet (see Appendix B) within which the student completes a narrative describing how the included work addresses the specified learning outcome(s) as well as a self assessment of the work. Separate cover sheets must be completed for each Learning Outcome and Service Learning even when the same work is being included to exemplify more than one component.
One piece of work must be included from a Service Learning class. This may include a Service Learning reflection paper; community service project; journals; etc. A separate cover sheet (see Appendix C) (link) will be included for the Service Learning component. The Service Learning work may also be used to exemplify a Learning Outcome.
III – Evaluation
The students’ portfolio will be evaluated on the following three aspects:
- Mechanics – sentence level accuracy; organization; logical argument development; proper documentation; etc.
[each paper evaluated] - Learning Outcomes – content mastery of 6 Learning Outcomes (see Appendix A) (link)
[each paper evaluated] - Progression/Development – assessment of the student’s development as a writer as well as mastery of course material across his or her academic career
[overall portfolio evaluated]
These evaluations will be conducted on the following rubric:
| Complete application of all concepts/skills | 5 |
| Superior knowledge, comprehension, and abilities to analyze, evaluation and synthesize concepts/skills | 4 |
| Intermediate levels of knowledge and comprehension with basic levels of analysis, evaluation and synthesis of concepts/skills | 3 |
| Minimum qualifications | 2 |
| Little/no knowledge/ability indicated | 1 |
A minimum average evaluation of 3.5 is required to pass the portfolio requirement and graduate from the program. If this minimum evaluation is not achieved, the student will be required to complete remedial work that may include revision of submitted work and/or new assignments.
