In 2007 a team of faculty from St. Mary’s University (StMU) participated in a National Science Foundation grant at James Madison University (JMU). The team developed an instrument to measure scientific and quantitative reasoning of students at StMU. The test consisted of questions from the assessment tool used at JMU and specific questions to address StMU’s core.

The objectives of the study were:

1. To explore the influence of freshman demographic variables including university school, high school type, school district attended, gender, race/ethnicity, and admittance status on test performance
2. To explore student performance for JMU questions, StMU questions, scientific reasoning questions, quantitative questions, and by objective
3. To explore differences in performance by objective for juniors from different university school
4. To explore the relationship between student test performance and high school GPA, high school class rank, SAT scores, and ACT scores
5. To explore the relationship between student test performance and performance on the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST)

Data was gathered from fulltime, first-time freshmen in the fall of 2007. Data was gathered from fulltime juniors and selective seniors in the spring 2008 on Assessment Day.

Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-tests, ANOVAs, and Pearson correlations.

Results/Conclusions

After analyzing the data the following observations were made:

1 Non-Hispanic students outperformed Hispanic students on the exam, JMU questions, quantitative reasoning questions, and scientific reasoning questions

2 Critical Studies Program and Academic Enhancement Program admits performed significantly lower than regular admits on the exam, JMU questions, quantitative reasoning questions, and scientific reasoning questions

3 Humanities and Social Sciences and Greehey School of Business juniors performed significantly lower than their School of Science, Engineering, and Technology counterparts on numerous objectives of the exam

4 Students from Catholic high schools performed significantly lower on the exam than students coming from public high schools

5 Student performance on the exam was positively related to high school GPA, high school class rank, SAT scores, and ACT scores

6 Student performance on the exam was positively related to performance on the CCTST

StMU continued to gather data on test performance from fulltime, first-time freshmen in the fall of 2008 as part of orientation activities and from fulltime juniors and selected seniors in the spring of 2009 as part of Assessment Day activities. Data is currently being analyzed.