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Re-accreditation
committee meets first deadline The first of five committees preparing for the university’s 10-year re-accreditation to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools submitted their report draft for review this week, said Nadia Lahutsky, vice chairwoman of the Principles and Philosophy of Accreditation Committee. “We took that deadline pretty seriously and worked up until the end to get the report as tidy as possible,” Lahutsky said.
The draft turned in by the Principles and Philosophy of Accreditation Committee is the first in a series of rolling deadlines stretching from Jan. 30 through May 25, said Alan Shepard, director of the SACS self-study and English department chairman. Each committee will submit two drafts that will be reviewed and revised by a steering committee before all five reports are combined into one final report that fully represents TCU, Shepard said. The report will then be submitted to Chancellor Michael Ferrari and the Administrative Cabinet to read and respond to, Shepard said. “What SACS wants from us is a thoughtful piece of work where a big cross-section of the university has looked at all the programs and services for students,” Shepard said. To assist the self-study in gathering a wide range of information, the committees received in December the results of the electronic surveys sent to students, faculty, staff and alumni in October 2001, Shepard said. Shepard said he was thrilled that 42 percent of undergraduates responded to the survey to give their opinions of campus services. “When you get several thousand responses from students, you know you’ve got accurate data,” Shepard said. The main focus in the re-accreditation process this semester will be to process this information and gather other data into the committee drafts so they can be completed by May, Shepard said. However, Shepard said TCU is also getting ready for the next steps in the self-study process. Shepard said he is preparing for a visiting committee of 15 to 20 college administrators and senior faculty members from other schools in SACS that is coming for a five-day visit in Spring 2003. Both the peer recommendations and the report are necessary qualifications in the self-study process. A university must also meet 13 basic conditions regarding its personnel, policies and institutional services to qualify for re-accreditation, said Gerald Lord, associate executive director of the SACS Commission on Colleges. “If an institution does not meet a condition of eligibility, its accreditation is not reaffirmed until it meets the condition,” Lord said. “If it doesn’t come into compliance within two years, then it could be dropped from membership with SACS.” Without re-accreditation, a university could lose all federal aid, including student loans, and permission for credit transfers to other educational institutions, Lord said. “For an institution not to be accredited raises questions about its quality — about itself and its faculty,” Lord said. The decision of whether or not to re-accredit TCU for another 10 years will be made in December 2003 at the SACS general assembly. Laura
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TCU Daily Skiff © 2002 |
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