An on-site team for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges is visiting the campus this week to review the University for a reaffirmation of its accreditation.
The accreditation takes place every 10 years.
William Perry, Texas A&M University vice provost and SACSCOC on-site team chair, said an accreditation is a way to say to the public that an institution is a university where a student can get a good education.
James Vermaelen, Student Government director of student involvement and Leadership Team student representative, said the University already is accredited, but it needs to show the on-site committee what plans the University has for the future and that it will continue to grow.
Vermaelen said if an institution loses it accreditation, most of its federal aid would be revoked, including Pell Grants.
Students would suffer the most from a lost of accreditation and the school would lose its reputation, he said.
Vermaelen said for an institution to lose its accreditation, it would have to not be reaffirmed during this current stage of the process and the SACSCOC would have to tell the institution its reasons for not reaffirming its accreditation.
“The Leadership team is not concerned that we will not be reaffirmed for accreditation,” he said. “But, we do welcome this opportunity to be reviewed by our peers.”
Vermaelen said the University can get input from its SACSCOC peer universities.
Vermaelen said it is important that the University shows it has a vision for the future, what it will do and a desired direction to go in.
But, this is not all the University needs to show, Vermaelen said. It also needs to be able to show that it can reach the goals it has set for itself.
“If you have some specific issues that we want to attack, then we [need] to show that not only do we have broad goals, but we have ways to achieve those goals,” Vermaelen said.
Perry said the committee is looking at the University’s Quality Enhancement Plan and who put it together.
He said the QEP is a forward-looking document that can change over time.
“In a way, it is an institutional prospectus,” Perry said.
Vermaelen said the SACSCOC on-site team is reviewing where the University is and what it is doing to achieve the information in the QEP.
“The Quality Enhancement Plan gives a timeline about what we want to achieve by the time the next accreditation comes around,” Vermaelen said.
He said the QEP also addresses issues of graduate and undergraduate studies.
Vermaelen said the QEP is based on what the University is and where it is going.
There was not much to the QEP when the Leadership Team started working with it a year ago, Vermaelen said. The document was made to correlate with the Flagship Agenda.
“It didn’t make sense for us to create a plan that did not follow in with the Flagship Agenda,” he said.
According to the SACSCOC accreditation Web site, the plan is designated to help achieve objective two and three of the Flagship Agenda.
The Web site said the objectives address making improvements in graduate and undergraduate learning.
The Leadership team also looked at the value of research in the graduate and undergraduate area, Vermaelen said.
For the undergraduate area, the Leadership team looked at having professors in the forefront of their fields in terms of research and creating new knowledge, he said. The Leadership team also looked at the value of undergraduates doing research and service learning.
The team will meet with students and administration to discuss the QEP.
Perry also said the team also is looking at a number of items about the compliance of accreditation that the SACS requires.
These items include the core requirements and comprehensive standards of the University, Perry said. There are 12 core requirements and several comprehensive standards the SACSCOC looks at.
Perry said the comprehensive standards looks at the number of hours required to get a degree at the university, financial control, physical resources, technology, academic support services and whether there are enough staff and faculty members to deliver quality work.
Perry said the standards give a measurement of quality to the university.
“A university’s great purpose is to learn and teach,” he said. “That is why the research is important.”
Perry said research and teaching correlate because faculty members need to learn and because students will be learning.
“We want to make sure student learning is important and it is of high quality,” he said.
He said the SACSCOC on-site team also will talk to University students and administrators.
The team wants to get the student perspective, Vermaelen said.
“If students and administrators don’t have the same views and don’t work together, then that is a problem,” he said.
Vermaelen said he does not think the University has a communication problem between faculty and students because the administration is tuned in with students.
Vermaelen said the Leadership Team also turned in a compliance certificate, which looks at whether the state recognizes the university and whether it has a board of supervisors.
He said there are certain items within the certificate that the university needs to meet.
The University sent its Compliance Certification on Aug. 15, 2003, Vermaelen said. In a telephone conversation, the SACSCOC off-site team told the Leadership Team what their findings were, but there were a few issues that needed more documentation.
He said the review team did not find any major problems with the certification.
Perry said the off-site team review was a preliminary look at the University.
The Leadership Team also submitted a focus report in response to the off-site team’s findings in the compliance certification in March.
So far, Perry said he thinks the University is a “good-size” university that is focused on the quality of students’ education, support of faculty and improved teaching.
He said he cannot talk about any critical issues he has seen within the University so far.
Perry said the Commission on Colleges will make a complete decision on the reaffirmation in December.