SACS Reaffirmation
| Objective | Civic Involvement | |
| Throughout their enrollment, students will participate in several activities designed to promote their civic involvement in local, state, and national government and politics. Associated Goals: Develop Students' Knowledge Of Government And Politics |
| Indicator | Civic Involvement Students' civic involvement will be measured through their participation in the internship program, the Junior Fellows program, and voter registration and voter education activities. |
| Criteria | Civic Involvement The department will offer at least 10 - 15 internships per year, promote at least 40 Junior Fellows Program activities per year, and organize at least 2 voter registration and voter education projects per year. |
| Finding | Civic Involvement The number of students invovled in activities and projects totaled over 500. internships: We secured over 40 internships at the local, state, and national level. This number reflects the pent-up demand in the department following a long period of time without a real undergraduate internship program. Although we were pleased with most of the internships we found that roughly half of the internships did not offer students consistent exposure to education and professionalism. Junior Fellows Program: We organized 63 activities through the Junior Fellows Program. However, roughly half of the actvities were narrow in scope (i.e., lasted less than a few hours and did not require extensive student participation). Voter projects: We completed two voter registration/voter information projects. Although we met our goal of two voter registration/education projects, the projects did not overlap in a meaningful manner. For example, students working on the voting brochure did not have much contact with students working on voter registration. |
| Action | Civic Involvement We will move towards a more realistic number of twenty or so interns per year. Such a strategy allows us to place only high-quality students while also ensuring that their work-place experience is rewarding. In the future the Political Science Junior Fellows will likely cut back on the number of educational opportunities offered to approximately thirty per year. Such restrictions will allow the Fellows to expand the size of their projects while continuing their emphasis on education, professionalism, and travel. In the future, voter registration and voter education activities will be incorporated into 6 or more of the Department’s American Government 261 courses. The average enrollment for 261 courses is sixty and thus we anticipated involving at least 360 students per semester in voter registration and voter education projects. This change in approach will allow us to better coordinate voter registration and voter education projects. |
| Objective | Knowledge Of Government And Politics | |
| 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. Associated Goals: Develop Students' Knowledge Of Government And Politics |
| Indicator | Knowledge Of Government And Politics The department offers courses in all fields of political science. Each semester a course will be selected from each field. Faculty teaching the courses will randomly select 5 papers for review. The Faculty Review Committee will use an agreed upon criteria to evaluate the papers. Papers will be scored using a simple scoring system of A, B , C, D, and F. |
| Criteria | Forms of Government We expect that (1) faculty scores will not vary in the vast majority of cases and when there is a difference in scores the difference will not be greater than a single letter grade and (2) at least 70% of the papers will score at the C level or above |
| Finding | Forms of Government Members of the review committee found that variations across assignments were too great to allow for an accurate assessment of students’ knowledge of government. For example, faculty found it difficult to compare and assess students'' journal entries describing their reaction to political speakers with students'' research papers. Assessment of students’ knowledge was also made difficult by the fact that faculty were asked to assess student knowledge in a variety of fields (comparative, international relations, theory, etc) that at times were outside some of the faculty members’ areas of specialization. |
| Action | Forms of Government 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 research papers (or the equivalent) from an upper division course being taught by one of the two faculty members. These changes will correct the problems we encountered in our initial attempt to assess student knowledge. We will continue to expect that (1) faculty scores will not vary in the vast majority of cases and when there is a difference in scores the difference will not be greater than a single letter grade and (2) at least 70% of the papers will score at the C level or above. |
| Objective | Skills | |
| Throughout their enrollment, students must complete extensive writing assignments that require the following abilities: analyze scholarly writing, interpret empirical data, understand argumentation, express well thought out opinions, and write clearly and correctly Associated Goals: Develop Students' Skills |
| Indicator | Skills Faculty members teaching #379 will randomly select 5 papers from each course. All papers will be reviewed by the faculty members. Faculty members will use an agreed upon criteria to evaluate the papers. Papers will be scored using a simple scoring system of A, B , C, D, and F. |
| Criteria | Skills We expect that (1) faculty scores will not vary in the vast majority of cases and when there is a difference in scores the difference will not be greater than a single letter grade and (2) at least 70% of the papers will score at the C level or above |
| Finding | Skills Faculty assigned the majority of papers the same scores. When there were differences in scores, the differences did not exceed a full letter grade. 76% of the papers scored at the C level or better. |
| Action | Skills The department will continue reviewing papers written by students enrolled in Pol Sci 379. We will encourage more writing in the course. |
| Objective | Professional Marketplace | |
| Upon graduation, students will be prepared to enter the professional marketplace Associated Goals: Prepare Students For Professional Careers |
| Indicator | Resumes Political science students enrolled in the required Research and Writing course (Pol Sci 379) will complete resumes that meet the professional requirements for employment fields related to the discipline of political science. Students will match their resumes to 5 job postings. Graduating seniors will take their resumes and selected job postings to the SHSU Office of Career Services. The staff at that office will use criteria provided by and agreed upon by the faculty to assign students a passing or failing grade. |
| Criteria | Resumes Students who receive a failing grade on their resume and job postings must resubmit all material to the Career Services Center until they have passed the assignment. |
| Finding | Resumes Involving the Career Services Office in the resume writing assignment proved logistically problematic. Although all students who submitted resumes passsed the resume writing assignment less than 10 out of roughly 100 students were able to coordinate their schedules with the hours offered by the Career Service Center. |
| Action | Resume There are no reasonable solutions to the problem of scheduling conflicts and thus we will be using a new tool for evaluating students’ professional skills. We will use questions 3 and 4 of our undergraduate exit survey to evaluate students'' professional skills. We will anticipate that at least 70% of our graduating seniors will answer yes to question 3d or question 4d and at least 50% or more will answer yes to question 3c or question 4a. |