Transitioning from Compliance to Innovation
Creating a culture for continuous improvement with academic programs is a challenge. As my institution—Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas—prepared for our decennial accreditation review, I found it difficult to motivate faculty to complete the required program reviews for the compliance report. With some cajoling, 41 faculty reluctantly agreed...
Accreditation from a Positive Leadership Perspective
May we be candid for a moment? When academic administrators are alone—no faculty members or representatives of the press in sight—one of the things we complain about most bitterly is accreditation. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about regional accreditation of all our programs or specialized accreditation of individual programs,...
The Advantages of an Annual Review of Departmental Data
Many academic departments now engage in annual cycles of assessment of student learning as well as departmental services. Best practices in higher education, reinforced by regional accrediting bodies, among others, dictate that only when departments assess student achievement and departmental initiatives, integrate those assessments meaningfully, and link them to resource...
