This month, Boston College will formally begin efforts to renew its accreditation, convening a committee of faculty and administrators to direct a university-wide self-study that will be a key facet of the process.
The New England Association of Schools and College’s Commission on Institutions of Higher Education (CIHE) will conduct the reaccreditation, which takes place every 10 years. A CIHE committee of educators from other institutions will visit BC in March of 2017, following completion of the University’s self-study in January of that year. The CIHE representatives will review the self-study and spend three days on campus interviewing members of the BC community and examining supporting documents.
The CIHE will consider both the self-study and visiting committee report in determining BC’s accreditation status. Good standing in a regional accreditation association is a requirement for participation in federal programs that support higher education.
Special Assistant to the President Robert Newton, who chaired BC’s previous three self-studies, and Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies Associate Director Seth Meehan will co-chair the University committee producing the self-study. Administrators and faculty members playing leadership roles in the self-study include: Kelli Armstrong, Julian Bourg, John J. Burns, Patricia DeLeeuw, Jessica Greene, Louise Lonabocker, Arthur Madigan, S.J., Katherine O’Dair, Michael Pimental, Akua Sarr and Nanci Tessier.
Provost and Dean of Faculties David Quigley has made recommendations for involvement by students and additional faculty members.
“Reaccreditation offers us an opportunity to take a look at how the University has progressed since 2007 and also how the broader context of higher education has changed,” said Quigley. “I look forward to welcoming the visiting team to campus in early 2017.”
“Boston College has always taken a positive attitude toward the accreditation process,” Newton said. “It provides an opportunity both to examine how BC is functioning and using its resources to fulfill its mission and also to invite colleagues from other institutions to give us feedback on how we can do better.”
Added Meehan, “What the last few months have impressed upon me is the sheer scope of the review process. The self-study responds to standards that examine every aspect of the University’s operations, doing so with extensive and complicated demands. Addressing those demands is a real challenge but also an opportunity for the University community.”
The BC self-study will respond to a list of standards developed by the CIHE that reflect key issues and topics in academics, student life, organizational effectiveness and other areas. Accreditors have been under fire from the federal government in recent years, Newton and Meehan noted, and this criticism has led to a different tone in many of the standards, emphasizing accountability, transparency, public disclosure and integrity.
The self-study will also direct attention to four issues that have attracted significant interest at Boston College in recent years: student formation, the renewal of the core curriculum, integrated science, and assessment.
Assessment of learning outcomes will be a key focus, said Newton and Meehan: Boston College will present not only the systems it has developed in academic affairs, student affairs, and mission and ministry but also the concrete results of assessment activities of the past five years.
The self-study process will include various opportunities for the University community to offer comments and reactions, the co-chairs added.
“In the almost four decades I have been involved with accreditation in higher education, the biggest substantive change has involved the shift from a focus on inputs – like faculty credentials and library resources – to outputs, such as what students are learning and accomplishing,” said Newton.
“The other major structural change in the past decade has been the involvement of the federal government in regulating accrediting agencies. In previous eras, the government trusted the judgments of the accreditors; today, regulation has replaced trust. This has had a major impact on accrediting standards: Today, articulation of outcomes and evidence of their achievement are at the center of what is expected in a self-study, and what the visiting committee for Boston College will be looking for.”
