Now that we have returned for the Spring quarter, I wanted to share with you our CACREP progress. We continue to move forward. I've included a recap of our Fall activity in case you missed that earlier post and the new information is in bold. A very special thanks to student and graduate assistant, Breanna Jones for all of her help on our CACREP initiative!
In the Fall we received approval to hire a consultant as part of the pre-application process. This involved collecting much information about our program faculty, courses, enrollments, graduates and more, to determine if we were in a position to be eligible to apply for CACREP accreditation. The consultant reviewed all of the materials and provided the necessary feedback at the end of the quarter. Based on this feedback, we made the decision to pursue accreditation and have again hired the consultant to support us in the process.
In our first meeting of the Winter quarter, the CSL faculty reviewed a timeline for the accreditation application that will take us through the remainder of the academic year. The goal by the end of the 15-16 year is to submit to the consultant a draft of our application, and at that point, we will again, await her feedback in order to determine next steps. We anticipate working monthly on various tasks of the application, breaking things down into manageable steps. This is a new venture for us so we are unsure what challenges may lie ahead but we are thankful to have a consultant assisting us along the way.
NEW: Also during the Winter quarter, our consultant visited with us for a full day on February 22nd. She provided an overview of the accreditation process, answered questions of faculty and helped us determine how to proceed with some smaller working groups on the more challenging areas of the application: program evaluation and student assessment. Much of our curriculum is in alignment with the CACREP standards but we need to develop more systems to collect data from stakeholders at various points, and to ensure student success throughout the program. The consultant provided helpful feedback after her visit that we are now using to continue our work. I continue to have monthly conversations with the consultant to ask questions that arise.
As the lead of our CACREP initiative, I anticipate taking all that we have done and will do during the remainder of the year, and working to draft our self-study during the summer. This is no small task as self studies can range from 200 to 1000 pages. As long as we remain on track with our monthly goals from the work plan, it is my hope that we will have a draft of the self-study for the consultant to review during the latter part of the summer. From there, she will be able to advise us on our readiness for submission, perhaps by the end of next Fall quarter. There will still be multiple steps in the accreditation process even after we have submitted the self study.
There is no guarantee of accreditation and nothing I can share at this point about expected dates of accreditation approval. The process is complex and involves multiple steps and phases. You may ask faculty any questions you have and/or you may consult this student FAQ page on the CACREP website.
