|
Reaccreditation
process is an opportunity for improvement
BY EMILY D.
JOHNSON
Assessment is deeply woven into the university culture. There are
student evaluations, grades, program evaluations. “We have
a very rich data bank of evaluation,” says Haig Mardirosian,
director of the General Education Program and AU professor since
1973, “but how do we codify it in a manageable way?”
That’s the challenge for AU right now as it works through the
Middle States Accreditation Process, which happens every ten years
and includes the design and execution of a massive self-study plan.
Accreditation is a voluntary process, meant to show that a university
is worthy of public confidence. AU is in no danger of losing its
accreditation, but it is still a process that needs to be done and
should really be looked at as an opportunity, says Mardirosian,
who cochairs the accreditation task force on undergraduate education.
“The university is radically different and in almost every
way better” than it was during the last Middle States review,
he says. “We are now able to demonstrate change over the past
ten years.” Mardirosian cites President Ladner’s 15-point
strategic plan, other administrators say that in the last ten years
the financial health of the university has improved, major academic
and student buildings have been renovated, student services have
been expanded, student quality has increased, and faculty compensation
and quality have improved.
AU could be even better, however, and Mardirosian thinks that the
review process is an opportunity to figure out how. “What does
American do well? What are its long-term goals? What means does
it use to meet those goals? . . . The key word now is assessment.
If we can do it for Middle States, we can do it for ourselves .
. . and in knowing our objectives for undergraduate education, we
can serve our students better.”
The accreditation organization to which AU belongs is the Middle
States Commission on Higher Education. Its members include eastern
universities from New York and Pennsylvania to the District of Columbia.
AU is one of the first universities to use Middle States’s
revised reaccreditation process, which focuses on results, or what
students have learned.
Middle States asks each university to design a self-study based
on specific areas of assessment in 14 “Characteristics of Excellence.”
Rather than answering preset wooden questions, a university can
tailor its self-study to address areas of special importance.
At AU, twenty-one faculty, staff, and students serve on a Middle
States Steering Committee headed by David Culver, professor and
chair of biology, College of Arts and Sciences. Members of the Steering
Committee head eight task forces on such topics as institutional
resources, faculty, and engagement and are charged with addressing
the questions written by the steering committee.
Almost 90 faculty, staff, and students serve on the task forces,
but Karen Froslid-Jones, director of institutional research, stresses
that this is a process that should involve the entire AU community.
“It is important that people on campus are familiar with the
process,” she says. To that end, AU has set up a Middle States
Web site <www.american.edu/middlestates>. It includes a list
of the task force members, a time line, news, and a copy of the
plan, “Self-Study Design,” that the steering committee
produced to direct their own progress. The “Links” section
includes the “Characteristics of Excellence” and the AU
statement of common purpose and 15 points, all of which were used
to design the self-study questions.
Each task force is currently finding data to support their areas
of assessment and will write a report. The steering committee will
combine the reports and connect the data with a bigger picture of
the “Characteristics of Excellence.” The steering committee
hopes to have a draft of the self-study at the end of April. A later
draft will be open to public comment, and the entire process, including
campus visits from Middle States representatives and approval of
the final self-study, should be wrapped up by July 2004.
top
|
