Preliminary discussions about the process began in the spring of 2006 and, starting in January of 2007, the appropriate administrative units drafted responses to the 11 standards of reaccreditation under the supervision of the Reaccreditation Steering Committee, and the Ad Hoc Faculty Advisory Group on Reaccreditation. During this fall, three drafts of the report have been produced with a final draft expected to be submitted in January.
Ultimately, a team of evaluators from different peer institutions and chaired by President Alfred Bloom of Swarthmore College will visit the campus in early March and write an evaluation and recommendations for areas the College can improve upon.
At first glance, the process may appear relatively mundane, and for a top tier college such as Amherst, it may seem like the reaccreditation process is simple.
Associate Dean of Faculty and coordinator of the self-study Rick Griffiths explained how in the past, the CIHE would largely accept that the College was doing a good job compared to most other schools. “Top tier schools like Amherst used to get sort of a free pass.” There would be a brief exchange of information and that would be it.
However, the process is now much more significant and complex. As a result of the increase in global media and the advent of the internet, the actions of the College have come under much more scrutiny over the years. The more distinguished an institution is, explained Griffiths, the bigger a news story it will be if that institution is doing something badly. “The culture of accountability and transparency has grown, and the upper institutions are under larger pressure to show what we are doing,” said Griffiths. “There is the suspicion that we might become a club to reproduce an elite or just generate prestige without educating anybody.”
The College’s report is divided into the 11 standards listed by the CIHE. For each standard, the report has three main sections: description, appraisal and projection which collectively evaluate the College’s performance in fulfilling the goals of the mission statement and identify areas needing improvement.
The result is a complex 150-page report that examines in detail every dimension of the College along with massive amounts of documentation, financial records, committee reports, surveys and statistics that support the report’s conclusions.
The big issue with reaccreditation is how the College presents itself and whether the administration is cognizant of the weaknesses of the College. With numerous resources for so few students, explained Griffiths, the College must show that it is using them wisely and that everything it does is worthwhile. The extensive reaccreditation process forces administrators to take a close look at all aspects of the College and examine problems that usually exist but may have gone unnoticed in the past.
The outside peer reviewers, who take an objective look at the College, visit and point out issues administrators may have thought were not actual problems or sources of future trouble. “What may seem perfectly normal here and better than peer institutions may in fact be out of whack,” said Griffiths.
In 1998, the NEASC was worried about a few major items at the College. Most importantly, it stated that the College needed a mission statement because that is the basis of the whole evaluation, that the College is achieving the goals it sets out for itself. So last year, the College devoted a considerable amount of time to develop one. Everyone, including the Board of Trustees, had to agree on the statement, explained Griffiths, because it establishes the basic principles of the College such as need-blind admissions and the open curriculum.
The open curriculum was also another concern of the NEASC. The College has had to provide compelling justification for the open curriculum because most schools think that the lack of these requirements can weaken the idea of a broad liberal arts education. “The College places more trust in the students,” said Griffiths. “We think that for students to take responsibility is a crucial part of [their education], and that means that we allow students to design their own program to an unusual degree.”
Other issues included the understaffed information technology department, which has since doubled, the evaluation of faculty after tenure, which has been examined by two ad hoc committees and an evaluation of how much students learn. The latter problem is an issue for all institutions that cannot be evaluated through specific documentation, but only through a more detailed analysis.
The self-study and draft reports have been discussed with the Board of Trustees, the Student Senate, numerous staff and faculty committees and the Executive Committee of the Alumni Association. The draft is now available to all members of the campus community. Many people, including alumni, were very invested in the creation of the document, explained Griffith. There were issues in it that nobody had known in advance. “All constituencies had to get on board at some points, such as in agreeing that advancing knowledge through research, as well as through teaching, is a central goal of the college.”
Griffiths stressed the necessity of taking the process seriously. “If we made a haphazard effort and just didn’t take it seriously, [the NEASC] would come down hard upon us, especially for wasting their time because the people who do this are volunteers,” said Griffiths. “It’s a membership organization. We subscribe to it, and we must honor that commitment.”