Culminating Experience
Students must complete an administrative internship in a local school division. Designed to wed theory and best practices, the internship provides practical application of the content knowledge acquired through the program. The internship may be started after 21 hours of coursework, including School Law, has been completed.
All students must pass a comprehensive exam to become eligible for graduation. Students anticipating applying for the PreK-12 administrative endorsement in Virginia must use the State Leadership Licensure Assessment (SLLA) given by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), required for endorsement by Virginia, as a comprehensive exam. The SLLA exam must be taken early enough to allow 15 business days for ETS to report scores to the School of Education and Human Development. If scores do not arrive on or before the deadline date each semester (May 1, June 1, and Dec 1), the student will not be able to graduate in that semester and will be required to pay a fee to graduate in the next semester.
Students who do not anticipate applying for the PreK-12 administrative endorsement in Virginia may choose to take an alternative comprehensive exam. When nearing completion of the program of study, these students would, with the advisor’s approval, request an alternative comprehensive exam that is evaluated by two faculty readers. Satisfactory performance must be demonstrated before the student can graduate. A student who fails to perform satisfactorily on the comprehensive examination may petition for one re-examination.