Effective
January 1, 2005; optional for fall 2004
The
Criteria Headings Defined
The Criteria for Accreditation
are organized under five major headings. Each criterion has three elements:
Criterion Statement, Core Components, and Examples of Evidence. These
elements are defined as follows.
Criteria Statements
These statements, adopted by the Commission,
define necessary attributes of an organization accredited by the Commission.
An organization must be judged to have met each of the Criteria to merit
accreditation. Sanctions may be applied if an affiliated organization is
in jeopardy of not meeting one or more of the Criteria.
Core Components
The Commission identifies Core Components of
each Criterion. An organization addresses each Core Component as it presents
reasonable and representative evidence of meeting a Criterion. The review
of each Core Component is necessary for a thorough evaluation of how an
organization meets a Criterion.
Examples of Evidence
The Commission provides in the Examples of Evidence
illustrative examples of the specific types of evidence that an organization
might present in addressing a Core Component. Organizations may provide
other evidence they find relevant to their mission and activities. Some
types of evidence suggested by the Commission may not be appropriate for
all organizations; therefore, the absence of a specific type of evidence
does not in and of itself mean that the organization fails to meet a Core
Component.
The Criteria for Accreditation
Criterion One: Mission and Integrity
Criterion Statement:
The organization operates
with integrity to ensure the fulfillment of its mission through structures
and processes that involve the board, administration, faculty, staff, and
students.
Core Component - 1a The organization’s mission documents
are clear and articulate publicly the organization’s commitments.
Examples of Evidence
- The board has adopted statements of mission, vision, values, goals,
and organizational priorities that together clearly and broadly define
the organization’s mission.
- The mission, vision, values, and goals documents define the varied
internal and external constituencies the organization intends to serve.
- The mission documents include a strong commitment to high academic
standards that sustain and advance excellence in higher learning.
- The mission documents state goals for the learning to be achieved
by its students.
- The organization regularly evaluates and, when appropriate, revises
the mission documents.
- The organization makes the mission documents available to the public,
particularly to prospective and enrolled students.
Core Component - 1b In its mission documents, the organization
recognizes the diversity of its learners, other constituencies, and the
greater society it serves.
Examples of Evidence
- In its mission documents, the organization addresses diversity within
the community values and common purposes it considers fundamental to
its mission.
- The mission documents present the organization’s function in
a multicultural society.
- The mission documents affirm the organization’s commitment to
honor the dignity and worth of individuals.
- The organization’s required codes of belief or expected behavior
are congruent with its mission.
- The mission documents provide a basis for the organization’s
basic strategies to address diversity.
Core Component - 1c Understanding of and support for the
mission pervade the organization.
Examples of Evidence
- The board, administration, faculty, staff, and students understand
and support the organization’s mission.
- The organization’s strategic decisions are mission-driven.
- The organization’s planning and budgeting priorities flow from
and support the mission.
- The goals of the administrative and academic subunits of the organization
are congruent with the organization’s mission.
- The organization’s internal constituencies articulate the mission
in a consistent manner.
Core Component - 1d The organization’s governance
and administrative structures promote effective leadership and support collaborative
processes that enable the organization to fulfill its mission.
Examples of Evidence
- Board policies and practices document the board’s focus on the
organization’s mission.
- The board enables the organization’s chief administrative personnel
to exercise effective leadership.
- The distribution of responsibilities as defined in governance structures,
processes, and activities is understood and is implemented through delegated
authority.
- People within the governance and administrative structures are committed
to the mission and appropriately qualified to carry out their defined
responsibilities.
- Faculty and other academic leaders share responsibility for the coherence
of the curriculum and the integrity of academic processes.
- Effective communication facilitates governance processes and activities.
- The organization evaluates its structures and processes regularly
and strengthens them as needed.
Core Component - 1e The organization upholds and protects
its integrity.
Examples of Evidence
- The activities of the organization are congruent with its mission.
- The board exercises its responsibility to the public to ensure that
the organization operates legally, responsibly, and with fiscal honesty.
- The organization understands and abides by local, state, and federal
laws and regulations applicable to it (or bylaws and regulations established
by federally recognized sovereign entities).
- The organization consistently implements clear and fair policies regarding
the rights and responsibilities of each of its internal constituencies.
- The organization’s structures and processes allow it to ensure
the integrity of its cocurricular and auxiliary activities.
- The organization deals fairly with its external constituents.
- The organization presents itself accurately and honestly to the public.
- The organization documents timely response to complaints and grievances,
particularly those of students.
Criterion Two: Preparing for the Future
Criterion Statement:
The organization’s
allocation of resources and its processes for evaluation and planning demonstrate
its capacity to fulfill its mission, improve the quality of its education,
and respond to future challenges and opportunities.
Core Component - 2a The organization realistically prepares
for a future shaped by multiple societal and economic trends.
Examples of Evidence
- The organization’s planning documents reflect a sound understanding
of the organization’s current capacity.
- The organization’s planning documents demonstrate that attention
is being paid to emerging factors such as technology, demographic shifts,
and globalization.
- The organization’s planning documents show careful attention
to the organization’s function in a multicultural society.
- The organization’s planning processes include effective environmental
scanning.
- The organizational environment is supportive of innovation and change.
- The organization incorporates in its planning those aspects of its
history and heritage that it wishes to preserve and continue.
- The organization clearly identifies authority for decision making
about organizational goals.
Core Component - 2c The organization’s ongoing evaluation and assessment
processes provide reliable evidence of institutional effectiveness that
clearly informs strategies for continuous improvement.
Core Component
- 2b The organization’s resource base supports its educational
programs and its plans for maintaining and strengthening their quality in
the future.
Examples of Evidence
- The organization’s resources are adequate for achievement of
the educational quality it claims to provide.
- Plans for resource development and allocation document an organizational
commitment to supporting and strengthening the quality of the education
it provides.
- The organization uses its human resources effectively.
- The organization intentionally develops its human resources to meet
future changes.
- The organization’s history of financial resource development
and investment documents a forward-looking concern for ensuring educational
quality (e.g., investments in faculty development, technology, learning
support services, new or renovated facilities).
- The organization’s planning processes are flexible enough to
respond to unanticipated needs for program reallocation, downsizing,
or growth.
- The organization has a history of achieving its planning goals.
Core Component - 2c The organization’s ongoing evaluation
and assessment processes provide reliable evidence of institutional effectiveness
that clearly informs strategies for continuous improvement.
Examples of Evidence
- The organization demonstrates that its evaluation processes provide
evidence that its performance meets its stated expectations for institutional
effectiveness.
- The organization maintains effective systems for collecting, analyzing,
and using organizational information.
- Appropriate data and feedback loops are available and used throughout
the organization to support continuous improvement.
- Periodic reviews of academic and administrative subunits contribute
to improvement of the organization.
- The organization provides adequate support for its evaluation and
assessment processes.
Core Component - 2d All levels of planning align with the
organization’s mission, thereby enhancing its capacity to fulfill
that mission.
Examples of Evidence
- Coordinated planning processes center on the mission documents that
define vision, values, goals, and strategic priorities for the organization.
- Planning processes link with budgeting processes.
- Implementation of the organization’s planning is evident in
its operations.
- Long-range strategic planning processes allow for reprioritization
of goals when necessary because of changing environments.
- Planning documents give evidence of the organization’s awareness
of the relationships among educational quality, student learning, and
the diverse, complex, global, and technological world in which the organization
and its students exist.
- Planning processes involve internal constituents and, where appropriate,
external constituents.
Criterion Three: Student Learning and
Effective Teaching
Criterion Statement:
The organization provides
evidence of student learning and teaching effectiveness that demonstrates
it is fulfilling its educational mission.
Core Component - 3a The organization’s goals for
student learning outcomes are clearly stated for each educational program
and make effective assessment possible.
Examples of Evidence
- The organization clearly differentiates its learning goals for undergraduate,
graduate, and post-baccalaureate programs by identifying the expected
learning outcomes for each.
- Assessment of student learning provides evidence at multiple levels:
course, program, and institutional.
- Assessment of student learning includes multiple direct and indirect
measures of student learning.
- Results obtained through assessment of student learning are available
to appropriate constituencies, including students themselves.
- The organization integrates into its assessment of student learning
the data reported for purposes of external accountability (e.g., graduation
rates, passage rates on licensing exams, placement rates, transfer rates).
- The organization’s assessment of student learning extends to
all educational offerings, including credit and noncredit certificate
programs.
- Faculty are involved in defining expected student learning outcomes
and creating the strategies to determine whether those outcomes are
achieved.
- Faculty and administrators routinely review the effectiveness and
uses of the organization’s program to assess student learning.
Core Component - 3b The organization values and supports
effective teaching.
Examples of Evidence
- Qualified faculty determine curricular content and strategies for
instruction.
- The organization supports professional development designed to facilitate
teaching suited to varied learning environments.
- The organization evaluates teaching and recognizes effective teaching.
- The organization provides services to support improved pedagogies.
- The organization demonstrates openness to innovative practices that
enhance learning.
- The organization supports faculty in keeping abreast of the research
on teaching and learning, and of technological advances that can positively
affect student learning and the delivery of instruction.
- Faculty members actively participate in professional organizations
relevant to the disciplines they teach.
Core Component - 3c The organization creates effective
learning environments.
Examples of Evidence
- Assessment results inform improvements in curriculum, pedagogy, instructional
resources, and student services.
- The organization provides an environment that supports all learners
and respects the diversity they bring.
- Advising systems focus on student learning, including the mastery
of skills required for academic success.
- Student development programs support learning throughout the student’s
experience regardless of the location of the student.
- The organization employs, when appropriate, new technologies that
enhance effective learning environments for students.
- The organization’s systems of quality assurance include regular
review of whether its educational strategies, activities, processes,
and technologies enhance student learning.
Core Component - 3d The organization’s learning resources
support student learning and effective teaching.
Examples of Evidence
- The organization ensures access to the resources (e.g., research laboratories,
libraries, performance spaces, clinical practice sites) necessary to
support learning and teaching.
- The organization evaluates the use of its learning resources to enhance
student learning and effective teaching.
- The organization regularly assesses the effectiveness of its learning
resources to support learning and teaching.
- The organization supports students, staff, and faculty in using technology
effectively.
- The organization provides effective staffing and support for its
learning resources.
- The organization’s systems and structures enable partnerships
and innovations that enhance student learning and strengthen teaching
effectiveness.
- Budgeting priorities reflect that improvement in teaching and learning
is a core value of the organization.
Criterion Four: Acquisition, Discovery,
and Application of Knowledge
Criterion Statement:
The organization promotes
a life of learning for its faculty, administration, staff, and students
by fostering and supporting inquiry, creativity, practice, and social responsibility
in ways consistent with its mission.
Core Component - 4a The organization demonstrates, through
the actions of its board, administrators, students, faculty, and staff,
that it values a life of learning.
Examples of Evidence
- The board has approved and disseminated statements supporting freedom
of inquiry for the organization’s students, faculty, and staff,
and honors those statements in its practices.
- The organization’s planning and pattern of financial allocation
demonstrate that it values and promotes a life of learning for its students,
faculty, and staff.
- The organization supports professional development opportunities
and makes them available to all of its administrators, faculty, and
staff.
- The organization publicly acknowledges the achievements of students
and faculty in acquiring, discovering, and applying knowledge.
- The faculty and students, in keeping with the organization’s
mission, produce scholarship and create knowledge through basic and
applied research.
- The organization and its units use scholarship and research to stimulate
organizational and educational improvements.
Core Component - 4b The organization demonstrates that
acquisition of a breadth of knowledge and skills and the exercise of intellectual
inquiry are integral to its educational programs.
Examples of Evidence
- The organization integrates general education into all of its undergraduate
degree programs through curricular and experiential offerings intentionally
created to develop the attitudes and skills requisite for a life of
learning in a diverse society.
- The organization regularly reviews the relationship between its mission
and values and the effectiveness of its general education.
- The organization assesses how effectively its graduate programs establish
a knowledge base on which students develop depth of expertise.
- The organization demonstrates the linkages between curricular and
cocurricular activities that support inquiry, practice, creativity,
and social responsibility.
- Learning outcomes demonstrate that graduates have achieved breadth
of knowledge and skills and the capacity to exercise intellectual inquiry.
- Learning outcomes demonstrate effective preparation for continued
learning.
Core Component - 4c The organization assesses the usefulness
of its curricula to students who will live and work in a global, diverse,
and technological society.
Examples of Evidence
- Regular academic program reviews include attention to currency and
relevance of courses and programs.
- In keeping with its mission, learning goals and outcomes include
skills and professional competence essential to a diverse workforce.
- Learning outcomes document that graduates have gained the skills
and knowledge they need to function in diverse local, national, and
global societies.
- Curricular evaluation involves alumni, employers, and other external
constituents who understand the relationships among the courses of study,
the currency of the curriculum, and the utility of the knowledge and
skills gained.
- The organization supports creation and use of scholarship by students
in keeping with its mission.
- Faculty expect students to master the knowledge and skills necessary
for independent learning in programs of applied practice.
- The organization provides curricular and cocurricular opportunities
that promote social responsibility.
Core Component - 4d The organization provides support to
ensure that faculty, students, and staff acquire, discover, and apply knowledge
responsibly.
Examples of Evidence
- The organization’s academic and student support programs contribute
to the development of student skills and attitudes fundamental to responsible
use of knowledge.
- The organization follows explicit policies and procedures to ensure
ethical conduct in its research and instructional activities.
- The organization encourages curricular and cocurricular activities
that relate responsible use of knowledge to practicing social responsibility.
- The organization provides effective oversight and support services
to ensure the integrity of research and practice conducted by its faculty
and students.
- The organization creates, disseminates, and enforces clear policies
on practices involving intellectual property rights.
Criterion Five: Engagement and Service
Criterion Statement:
As called for by its
mission, the organization identifies its constituencies and serves them
in ways both value.
Core Component - 5a The organization learns from the constituencies
it serves and analyzes its capacity to serve their needs and expectations.
Examples of Evidence
- The organization’s commitments are shaped by its mission and
its capacity to support those commitments.
- The organization practices periodic environmental scanning to understand
the changing needs of its constituencies and their communities.
- The organization demonstrates attention to the diversity of the constituencies
it serves.
- The organization’s outreach programs respond to identified
community needs.
- In responding to external constituencies, the organization is well-served
by programs such as continuing education, outreach, customized training,
and extension services.
Core Component - 5b The organization has the capacity and
the commitment to engage with its identified constituencies and communities.
Examples of Evidence
- The organization’s structures and processes enable effective
connections with its communities.
- The organization’s cocurricular activities engage students,
staff, administrators, and faculty with external communities.
- The organization’s educational programs connect students with
external communities.
- The organization’s resources—physical, financial, and
human—support effective programs of engagement and service.
- Planning processes project ongoing engagement and service.
Core Component - 5c The organization demonstrates its responsiveness
to those constituencies that depend on it for service.
Examples of Evidence
- Collaborative ventures exist with other higher learning organizations
and education sectors (e.g., K-12 partnerships, articulation arrangements,
2+2 programs).
- The organization’s transfer policies and practices create an
environment supportive of the mobility of learners.
- Community leaders testify to the usefulness of the organization’s
programs of engagement.
- The organization’s programs of engagement give evidence of
building effective bridges among diverse communities.
- The organization participates in partnerships focused on shared educational,
economic, and social goals.
- The organization’s partnerships and contractual arrangements
uphold the organization’s integrity.
Core Component - 5d Internal and external constituencies
value the services the organization provides.
Examples of Evidence
- The organization’s evaluation of services involves the constituencies
served.
- Service programs and student, faculty, and staff volunteer activities
are well-received by the communities served.
- The organization’s economic and workforce development activities
are sought after and valued by civic and business leaders.
- External constituents participate in the organization’s activities
and cocurricular programs open to the public.
- The organization’s facilities are available to and used by
the community.
- The organization provides programs to meet the continuing education
needs of licensed professionals in its community.
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