Your Customized Degree Plan

 In the Unit 8 Assignment, you will identify your intended career and academic goals, and then apply your critical thinking skills to formulate a logical solution and develop your Customized Criminal Justice Degree Plan to achieve your career and educational goals. You will accomplish this by using the information provided about the Criminal Justice program and classes, combined with your intended career and academic goals, to review and select the elective classes for your Customized Criminal Justice Degree Plan. This will give you a preliminary academic map to work toward your degree goal throughout your studies.
This Assignment has two parts:
In Part I you will create your Customized Degree Plan in an Excel spreadsheet and select your electives. Part II asks you to explain the reasoning behind your choices in your degree plan.
Part I: Customized Degree Plan
As you may have noticed, your degree plan has both required courses and courses that you get to choose, called electives. To create your Customized Degree Plan, you will choose each of the elective classes that will fulfill the elective credit hour requirements in your degree plan. The point of this exercise is to get you actively involved in your class choices based on your career plans.
Think about the career plan you have made for yourself and decide whether you are more interested in pursuing a more general knowledge of the criminal justice field (i.e., police officer) or perhaps a more concentrated area such as corrections (i.e., corrections officer). Cater your elective choices to fit your career needs. You may choose to follow the sample degree plans provided or create your own elective choices.
Download Sample Degree Plan
In Course Documents, there are sample degree plans. To access these plans, on the Table of Contents, click Course Resources, then Course Documents. You should see a list of documents similar to the following.

AAS CJ and Criminology Degree Plan.xlsx
Student Template AAS CJ and Criminology Degree Plan.xlsx
AAS PS and Security Degree Plan.xlsx
Student Template AAS PS and Security Degree Plan.xlsx
CJ Associates Degree Plan.xlsx
Student Template CJ Associates Degree Plan.xlsx
BS Criminal Justice Degree Plan.xlsx
Student Template BS Criminal Justice Degree Plan.xlsx
BS Corrections Degree Plan.xlsx
Student Template BS Corrections Degree Plan.xlsx

Download and review the sample degree plan for your respective program and the associated student template for the degree plan. You will use the student template to create your customized degree plan.
The sample degree plan provides a road map for a well-rounded general knowledge of the criminal justice field, even if your current career path does not require concentration in any one area or you have not decided whether you will concentrate in a particular field.
Choose Electives
After downloading and reviewing the sample degree plan for your program, you will choose each of the elective courses that will fulfill the elective credit hour requirements in your degree plan.
For help in choosing electives, go to the Purdue University Global Academic Catalog and read the descriptions for all the elective courses that seem of interest to you. These course descriptions should help you to further understand the skills and knowledge that will be featured in the courses available.
After reading the course descriptions, make your elective choices and use the student template to complete your customized degree plan. Be sure you have met the appropriate amount of credits for your elective options. Remember your Customized Degree Plan will serve as a guide for ongoing conversations with your advisor.
Part II: Explanation of Your Choices
To complete this portion of the Assignment, go to Course Documents and download the file CJ100_Unit8_Part II_Assignment_Template.doc. You will use this template to record your answers to the questions below about your Customized Degree Plan:

Why have you chosen the elective classes included in your degree plan?
What skills and knowledge do you expect to learn from these classes?
How will these individual skills and knowledge help you in your field?
How will these electives further your career goals in general?

Answer each question in paragraph form. Your responses should be double-spaced, using 12 pt. Arial font, and Standard English. Your answers will be based on your thoughts and, therefore, will not require outside citations. However, if you do cite outside references, you will have to provide the source information. In addition, your Assignment should demonstrate careful proofreading.