CJS 271: Criminal Behavior
Dr. Van Gundy-Yoder redesigned the final project in her CJS 271 course and created a rubric for assessing students' critical thinking skills (as demonstrated on this project).

Dr. Van Gundy-Yoder identified the following course objectives for CJS 271:
• To describe how choice, biological traits, and environment impacts criminal behavior
• To apply theories of criminality to crime typologies and criminal activity
• To foster a better understanding on how to classify, mediate, and respond to criminal behavior
• To provide future criminal justice employees a theory-based approach to criminal behavior

She designed the final paper so that it focused and built upon these course objectives. Students were assigned a well-known criminal offender for their final project. Students were asked to describe how a particular theory (of their choice) impacted the assigned offenders’ behavior, to apply theories of criminality to the crimes the offender was suspected of as well as ones they were convicted of, and to classify their offender. Completing this assignment allowed students to critically analyze, evaluate and apply a theoretically based approach to an individual case study of criminal behavior.

Assignments

Case Study Assignment