Graduate Student Achievement

Christopher Newport provides four Master’s degree programs: Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT), Master of Financial Analysis (MFinA), Master of Science in Environmental Science (MS-ENVS), and Master of Science in Applied Physics and Computer Science (MS-APCS). To measure the student achievement of graduate students at Christopher Newport, the university uses the following key student completion indicators.

Christopher Newport uses the number of conferred degrees as one of its measures for student achievement in graduate studies. The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) monitors the number of degrees offered by Virginia institutions and has set productivity standards for the degrees and disciplines offered across the state. CNU has set these productivity standards as the thresholds of acceptability, representing the minimum expectation, for degree conferral.

	Master of Arts in Teaching	Master of Financial Analysis	Master of Science in Applied Physics and Computer Science	Master of Science in Environmental Science
Aspirational Goal	80	36	12	15
SCHEV Productivity Requirement/Threshold of Acceptability	7	7	5	5
2022	47	13	9	14
2021	49	18	10	8
2020	52	-	10	1
2019	60	-	6	7
2018	77	-	7	12
2017	70	-	9	7

*A new program, the Master of Financial Analysis program had its first graduating cohort in 2021

The Division of Graduate Studies has focused on reducing the time-to-completion for our traditional Master of Science students over the past several years. The interventions implemented have worked to reduce and /or maintain the time-to-degree for the Master of Science degrees, the Bachelor’s to Master’s degrees, as well as the MAT degrees.

The Division of Graduate Studies goal is to maintain a time-to-completion for the master’s degrees of no more than three years. This will serve as the threshold of acceptability, representing the minimum expectation, and our time-to-completion goal. This threshold is consistent with the expected completion for master’s degrees, considering the multitude of variables that affect the navigation of degree requirements.

The Virginia Department of Education requires all K-12 teachers to pass the VCLA, RVE, and Praxis II exams to obtain a teaching license. Therefore, the Master of Arts in Teaching degree program has embedded these exams to be completed by applicable pre-service K12 teachers to ensure readiness for the required student-teaching internship.

In all tests, the Commonwealth of Virginia established minimum state cut-off scores for passing which are used as Christopher Newport’s thresholds of acceptability, representing the minimum expectation. The Office of Teacher Preparation collects these data for its Council for the Accreditation of Education Preparation (CAEP) accreditation process.

VCLA

Cohort		Reading Score		Writing Score		State cut-off/Threshold of Acceptability	Composite Score		State cut-off/Threshold of Acceptability
Year	n	M	SD	M	SD		M	SD
2020	51	269.8	16.6	247.6	10.4	235	517.4	23.2	470
2021	49	273.9	18.1	255.2	17.3	235	529.5	30.6	470
2022	53	250.1	15.6	262.9	17.2	235	513.2	24.7	470

RVE

Cohort	N	Mean	SD	Mean of State Test Takers	State cut-off/Threshold of Acceptability	Mean Points Above State Cut-Off
2020	19	182.0	6.7	174.2	157	25
2021	29	181.0	10.6	174.4	157	24
2022	29	173.0	31.0	171.5	157	16

Praxis II

	Art	Biology	Chemistry	English	ESL	Math	Music	Physics	Spanish	Social Studies
State Cut-Off / Threshold of Acceptability	158	155	155	167	149	160	160	N/A	161	161
Cohort 2020	168.7	168.0	N/A	183.1	183.5	167.7	175.6	N/A	179.0	174.8
Cohort 2021	N/A	N/A	160.0	N/A	178.0	171.7	175.9	N/A	174.0	179.6
Cohort 2022	162.0	179.5	N/A	180.1	183.5	177.7	174.0	N/A	N/A	172.6

	Elementary: Reading and Language Arts	Elementary: Math	Elementary: Science	Elementary: Social Studies
State Cut-Off / Threshold of Acceptability	157	157	159	155
Cohort 2020	176.0	185.1	174.6	177.9
Cohort 2021	175.7	184.7	175.6	171.3
Cohort 2022	176.8	181.1	173.6	173.6