So, one of the reasons I'm back from sabbatical is I've been plugging away at the online Executive Certificate in Criminal Justice program at Liberty University. The Executive Certificate is 21 credits of doctoral-level (700 & 800 level) coursework, compared to a Ed.S. or C.A.G.S. which is usually comprised of Master's level courses in addition to a Master's degree. The Liberty program requires a completed Master's degree in the subject field for admission. The courses are administered through Canvas, which is a pretty decent Learning Management System. You can choose traditional 15-week classes or accelerated 8-week, I chose accelerated, because why not? You may have the same classmates in different classes, but you may not, there are no cohorts, as some people will do an 8-week class, then a 15-week next, or vice-versa. Each course requires about 100+ pages of reading per week, then alternating weeks with either a formal paper (8-10 pages not counting title or reference pages) or a 600-word response to a discussion question along with 250-word replies to at least two classmates. There's a final 10-15 page paper due at the end of the semester, and all formal papers are run through TurnItIn. The textbooks are comprehensive and appropriate for the subject. It's very much a Lone Ranger experience, you have limited interaction with classmates other than the discussion questions, so it can definitely feel isolating at times. The teachers have been great with one exception, that person kept dinging me on APA formatting when I know it was correct (I had the APA 7 Manual in front of me when I double-checked) and would give vague feedback ("Improve your APA formatting") with no details. Every course also has a heavy Biblical component, you have to include Bible references with each paper and discussion question response. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but may turn off some people. I graduated from a Baptist-affiliated high school where Bible Study was part of the core curriculum every year, so I'm not exactly a fish out of water with that, but I've definitely had to dust off some cobwebs. The best part (for me) is the price, the tuition rates for military (which includes Veterans) are an incredible bargain for a RA graduate program. They also have discounts for First Responders (police, fire, corrections, EMS), but you can't double-up on discounts for doctoral-level courses, and the Veteran rate is better, so that's what I went with. If anyone has any questions, I'll be happy to try to answer them.
I experienced a similar APA formatting issue in my previous course. It turned out that the instructor had not fully updated her knowledge of the APA 7 style requirements and was still adhering to the APA 6 version by default in her mind.
Well, the got creamed in the first round of the 2024 NCAA Basketball Tournament by Oregon. They are one of the very few teams to completely keep their team together. They could make some serious noise in the 2025 Tournament
