The Omnibus

Issue date: 9/23/05 Section: News

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Southwest Baptist University pride is not just for athletic/academic competitions, it is for every aspect of Bearcat life. SBU students and faculty should feel proud about its accreditation as well.

"Accreditation is a process of evaluation of an institution that says that it meets certain standards and verifies education standards." said Dr. Rosalyn Snellen, Associate Provost.

Why should SBU feel proud about accreditation? Because SBU is an accredited school. Accreditation is important in school selection, because if you want to go on to a graduate school, you need to have graduated from an accredited college or university. Transferring credit from a non-accredited school is a difficult thing to do.

Accreditation is important to more than just graduate schools and transfer students. The federal government finds accreditation very important. And you should too.

"Student aid has to be accredited schools. Federal government will not give student aid to non-accredited schools" informed Snellen.

SBU cannot get money from the government unless it's accredited. Well, who determines if SBU is accredited?

"Higher Learning Commission is officially the accrediting body of the North Central Association" stated Snellen.

SBU belongs to the North Central Association, a divisional region of the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). So it is their business to know how 'down to business' SBU is. How does the HLC know how SBU is doing? Well, there are a few things HLC does to make sure SBU is maintaining its accreditation. First, they only allow a ten-year term of accreditation for a school. That means after the term is up the school must go through the process of becoming accredited again. Second, HLC sends a team of surveyors to come to the campus and meet with all sorts of SBU students, staff, faculty, etc. even those on the off-campus sites. What are they looking for? The HLC has a list of five criteria, and they are as follows mission integrity, preparing for the future, teaching and learning, acquisition discovery and application of knowledge, engagement in service.

There are four or five sub criteria for each of those criteria.

But before that visit, SBU has to do a little homework of its own. It has done it extensively so.

"We have been doing lots of research, some surveys, and focus groups." listed Snellen.

SBU is trying to determine how well it meets those five criteria. This is not just a week long project either.

"We have been doing a self-study now for two years plus." announced Snellen.

Dr. Snellen has some of the written documentation from the study. She said that the finished product will be approximately 200 pages. Snellen then continued by saying that they will send this document to the HLC in January, because a surveying team of seven or eight must review the document before coming to SBU March sixth through the eighth to verify the results. The surveying team will then write a report of their findings and send it to SBU a couple of weeks later.

What improvements has SBU made since its previous visit? Administrative and academic program review has been instituted.

"One of the things we are continually working on is communication." said Snellen.

She informed me that they not only have been working on communication among students, but also between students and staff as well as campus to off-campus communication lines.

"It's an extensive process, but it is a very good process, because it does help us see some stuff we need to work on." said Snellen.

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