A national study places Charleston Southern University in the top 10 percent of universities for value added through education among those tested as part of the Collegiate Learning Assessment.
“The CLA provides a holistic measurement of common skills that include critical thinking, analytic reasoning, problem solving and written communication,” said Jeff Babetz, director of institutional effectiveness at Charleston Southern.
CSU has completed two full cycles of testing, measuring the value of the education that students gain from freshman year through senior year.
According to Babetz, results determined that while Charleston Southern freshmen start out testing at the level expected for those with their mean SAT score, after being exposed to a Charleston Southern education, seniors score well above expectation for a group with their mean SAT score. Simply stated, their educational value added is significantly greater than projected. For the second year in a row, CSU’s performance demonstrated a degree of improvement between freshmen and seniors that was higher than 90 percent of approximately 115 participating institutions with qualifying sample sizes.
The testing is administered by the Council for Aid to Education.
A combination of six factors make Charleston Southern successful in preparing graduates and transforming their lives: faculty and student relationships, CSU being a teaching versus research institution, optimum class size, real world exercises built into classroom instruction, the mission of the university, and student service activities outside the classroom.
“One of the goals I’ve had for a long time with students is to create what I would call a learning community that encompasses not just what happens in the classroom but what happens outside the classroom,” said Bob Ratliff, dean of students. “We bring faculty members into the residence halls to talk to the students in small groups about topics that are unrelated to academics. It gives the students a side of their professor that they may not see in the classroom.”
Charleston Southern University offers students opportunities to lead and take part in service projects locally, across the nation, and on a global level. Each year, students take part in mission trips in 16 countries where they serve others through building homes, preparing food, ministering to orphans, teaching classes, doing handy work for the poor, and much more.
“We constantly challenge students to step up and be leaders,” said Ratliff. “All universities do service to some extent, so I’m not claiming that we do anything special in that area, but I do think that we spend more time making students realize that an important thing to do with your life is to give of yourself.”