UC Board of Trustees Updated on Accreditation Self-Study

UC’s self-study report is now accessible online at http://www.uc.edu/hlcaccreditation

The final countdown is on to the University of Cincinnati’s timeline for reaccreditation from the Higher Learning Commission/North Central Association (HLC/NCA). At this morning’s UC Board of Trustees meeting, the board was presented with copies of the self-study, as co-chairs Lawrence J. Johnson, dean of the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services (CECH), and Ralph Katerberg, head of the Department of Management for the College of Business, delivered a briefing on the findings.

The report, numbering more than 200 pages, is a comprehensive look at the university. Based on remarks from the co-chairs at this morning’s Board of Trustees meeting, the report is a story to be proud of. Johnson explained to the board that reaccreditation is a process that takes place every decade – an opportunity for the university to reflect on itself and where it is headed. “I co-chaired the last self-study committee and when we wrote that last study, we focused on some jewels in the crown and highlighted some outstanding colleges,” Johnson told the board. “This time, the report is written from the perspective that this is a great university, that there have been some dramatic changes over the past 10 years, and the report reflects that,” Johnson said.

Dozens of contributors across the university – led by a steering team with representation ranging from the Office of the Senior Vice President & Provost to Administration and Finance to the Academic Health Center to college administrators and Student Government – have been at work on the report for the past two years.

The report is now on its way to be reviewed by a 12-member team of national HLC/NCA evaluators who work at peer institutions including the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago and Northern Illinois University. The HLC/NCA evaluation team will be led by Celestino Fernández, a professor of sociology at the University of Arizona. Fernández has served on accreditation review teams throughout the United States as well as internationally. The team will continue its review of the university’s bid for reaccreditation with a visit to campus April 27-29. University leadership will host a special reception for the accreditation team on Sunday, April 26.

During the campus visit, team members will tour the campus and different offices and centers, speak and meet with students, faculty, staff, administrators and representatives of the community, and they will review a special resource room holding materials supporting the self-study. The resource room will be located in Room 400-A of Tangeman University Center (TUC).

In addition to the self-study, the team members will receive an institutional profile of the university compiled by the Office of Institutional Research, as well as a comprehensive report on the university’s budget and finance and compliance policies. The self-study report is now available online and additional documentation is or soon will be available from the UC self-study Web site at http://www.uc.edu/hlcaccreditation

The team will review UC’s national standards for quality and accountability in five key areas:

• Mission and Integrity – An opportunity to show how the evolution of UC|21 has defined the new urban research university
• Preparing for the Future – Including institutional planning and its alignment with academic priorities, as well as addressing the financial challenges affecting universities across the nation
• Student Learning and Effective Teaching – Including how UC is measuring student learning outcomes. Johnson reported there are pockets of excellence across the university regarding assessment.
• Acquisition, Discovery and Application of Knowledge – In which examples of excellence include UC’s research activity, support and funding, General Education and its assessment (a result of the last accreditation self-study), and Integrated Core Learning (ICL)
• Engagement and Service – Johnson reported that this category once again was one of the university’s strengths in the report.

Katerberg, himself a national peer reviewer for accreditation, told the board that the steering committee regularly reached out to the HLC/NCA for feedback during the self-study exercise. That included a visit last May from Mary Breslin, an associate director for the HLC. Celestino Fernández, the chair of the HLC/NCA team that will be visiting UC in April, was briefed on the process of the self-study in a series of meetings during a campus visit on Feb. 9. “He departed Cincinnati feeling very positive about the upcoming campus visit,” Katerberg told the board.

Also, in preparation of the site visit, Katerberg told the board that HLC consultant/evaluator Elaine Klein, a national expert on student learning and assessment and assistant dean of the College of Letters and Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, visited campus and was updated by the steering committee on March 3.

“The team will spend two full days on campus,” Katerberg explained to the board. “They will come here with a set of hypotheses about where we stand on the accreditation criteria and then work to validate these with evidence gathered during the visit.”

The commission will issue its report on the university in summer 2009 and will announce any action and recommendation for continued accreditation in fall 2009.

The university is also seeking comments from the public in preparation for the evaluation. All public comments must be received by March 27, 2009.