Accreditation is for Our Students
Every six years we have to gear up to create a gigantic report for the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC). The Commission gets to tell the Feds (Department of Education) whether or not we’re doing our job according to their, the ACCJC’s, judgment. And that judgment is based on how well they think a college responds to the Standards they have put together.
The Standards are written by the Commission on the basis of current trends in higher education (including what the other accrediting organizations around the country are doing and what the DOE wants) and input from colleges in our region. The Four Standards (broken down into 11 sub-sections) pose very specific questions about how we handle instruction, student services, library services, administrative services, etc. Our job in writing the self-evaluation is to demonstrate that we meet the standards. As usual, we meet them quite well, thank you!
A Team Effort
The ACCJC uses a three-step approach when evaluating colleges. First, we write our self-evaluation (explaining in detail how we think we’re doing), then the Commission sends out a site team to decide how they think we’re doing (this group is made up of faculty and administrators), and finally the ACCJC themselves conclude how well we meet the standards overall when they issue their final report.
We started the whole process this time around back in spring of 2011. Soon after being selected to be faculty lead on the project, I started collaborating with Renee Kilmer, the accreditation liaison officer (ALO) at that time. Early on we recruited co-chairs and members for the various teams, and set timelines and work schedules to get the report itself researched and written. Renee was instrumental in setting up the overall project in the first place. She had a clear vision of the self-evaluation, and I believe we have produced something very close to what she had in mind.
Nearly one hundred people participated in the research and development phase of the project as members of the various standards’ teams. Some of the Standards are longer than others based on what they cover, so some of the teams were larger than others. But everyone pulled together throughout the writing process – especially our twenty-five Co-Chairs who did an incredible job of bringing their teams together to research and write multiple drafts of responses to each of the standards.
by Rory O'Brien
| Nearly one hundred people participated in the research and development phase of the project as members of the various standards’ teams. Some of the Standards are longer than others based on what they cover, so some of the teams were larger than others. But everyone pulled together throughout the writing process – especially our twenty-five Co-Chairs who did an incredible job of bringing their teams together to research and write multiple drafts of responses to each of the standards. |
The Long and Winding Road
It has taken four semesters of work to put together the 2013 Accreditation Self-Evaluation. Rachel Mayo, our current ALO, and I are wrapping up work on the report so we can present it to the Governing Board in May for a first reading. We expect the Board to approve the draft at their June meeting. After that we’ll swing into production mode to put together both a print and online e-version of the report.
The accreditation self-evaluation process might seem like a waste of time and energy if it weren’t for a few core facts. First off, students need to know when they take courses at Cabrillo that their units will transfer easily to other institutions. Our credibility as a college depends on being accredited as without accreditation, those units go nowhere. And financial aid? It just doesn’t happen if you are not an accredited institution. Luckily, our experience with accreditation has always been quite positive. And last time around (2007), we were held up as a statewide model for developing and assessing Student Learning Outcomes (SLO). This all enhances Cabrillo’s reputation among community colleges in the state, in turn helping our students who wish to transfer.
We also benefit as an institution when we have broad discussions about how we are doing what we do every day. Sometimes it takes an outside organization to prompt us to do that work. I used to think that I knew a little bit about Cabrillo. But having worked on this project from the beginning, I have to say that I’ve learned an amazing amount about how the college operates and just how hard so many members of our college community work.
By mid-summer we’ll have submitted our virtual version of the self-evaluation to the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges. Our site team will start researching Cabrillo during the summer as they prepare to visit in October. Nowadays the visiting team will do much of their work before they even step foot on campus! All of the evidence for the report is linked electronically – we’re pretty much paperless.
When the visiting team arrives in October, you’ll meet faculty and administrative colleagues from other community colleges around the state here as part of the peer review process. Do your part by welcoming them and sharing your positive experiences at our college.