Accreditation Visit Reaction: UC Is Looking Good

“The team found a much improved university, a transformed university that better serves its constituents. You are all to be congratulated.” – Celestino Fernández, chair of the UC team of national peer evaluators for the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (HLC/NCA)

The 12-member team of national consultant evaluators for the HLC/NCA has now departed campus after an intensive two days of meetings with more than 350 students, administrators, staff, faculty and community partners. The visit, a vital element in the process for university-wide re-accreditation, helps the consultant evaluators confirm the findings in the university’s self-study, as well as offers guidance on how the university can achieve even greater excellence in the years ahead.

In a final meeting Wednesday with the President’s Cabinet, self-study co-chairs Lawrence J. Johnson and Ralph Katerberg, and members of the UC self-study steering committee, HLC/NCA evaluation team chair Celestino Fernández announced that the team will not be recommending any follow-up on their findings, and that the team will recommend that the next comprehensive review of the university should take place during the regular 10-year period that the HLC/NCA schedules for re-accreditation.

Fernández emphasized that the team does not make final decisions regarding re-accreditation, but rather makes recommendations. The consultant evaluators will now get to work on assembling a report of their findings from the university’s self-study and campus visit, which the team will send back to the university for a response. That process will occur within the next six weeks.

Once the report is reviewed by UC, the university has two weeks to respond to the team’s findings before sending its updates to the HLC. The HLC will then send the final report to the president. Final action will be announced in fall 2009.

The two-year self-study involved university-wide participation in taking an open,  reflective and objective look at the evidence-based accomplishments of the university as well as how the university is responding to future challenges in higher education.

The report focuses on five key areas:

• Mission and Integrity
• Preparing for the Future
• Student Learning and Effective Teaching
• Acquisition, Discovery and Application of Knowledge
• Engagement and Service

In the Wednesday morning meeting following Fernández’s exit interview with UC President Nancy L. Zimpher, Fernández said the team was impressed with the number of programs, initiatives and the people that the team met over the past two days.

“Your progress in the past five years in planning and academic programs encourages you to move on the trajectory you charted for yourselves,” he said. “We met with a lot of individuals and a lot of groups and they were very forthcoming, which is what we needed to verify the findings in the self-study,” he said.

Fernández emphasized that accreditation is about two things: quality assurance – demonstrating that the university is meeting the national standards of quality – and improvement.

Among the team’s findings, Fernández said the team will report that UC is in compliance with federal requirements. He added that the materials provided for review could serve as a model for other institutions undergoing accreditation. Fernandez said that across the board, they found evidence that UC was meeting the criterion for re-accreditation in planning, academic programs and engagement with the community, and that the team would highlight many accomplishments in these areas.

Among the team’s recommendations – that UC continues its momentum to implement a solid strategic plan, and that UC needs to continue focusing resources on enhancing the diversity of its faculty. The team also recommended building on UC’s tools for measuring student learning by building learning outcomes into UC’s semester conversion plan.

“I am very pleased by the outcome of the HLC/NCA review,” says Anthony J. Perzigian, senior vice president and provost. “It confirms the academic excellence that is the University of Cincinnati and will guide us on integrating semester conversion with student learning outcomes.”

Self-study co-chairs Lawrence J. Johnson, dean of the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services, and Ralph Katerberg, head of the Department of Management for the College of Business, both remarked on the stellar work of the steering committee in creating the self-study. “We’re grateful for the work of the steering committee and to all of those in the UC community who took part in the meetings and open forums during the campus visit,” Johnson says.

“More than 60 people across the university worked on preparing the self-study in addition to hundreds of faculty and staff who took part in the visit and showed our HLC/NCA guests what UC is all about,” says Katerberg.

President Zimpher thanked the team for its work and stated that the university is progressing smoothly in a time of transition and the search for a new president.

The final report from the HLC will be added to the university’s self-study and other key documents that can be reviewed from the UC/HLC accreditation Web site at http://www.uc.edu/hlcaccreditation