ASU community invited to take part in accreditation review process
Faculty, staff and students across ASU will have the opportunity this month to voice their ideas about ASU at special forums held on all four campuses. These forums are part of the decennial review of the institution’s accreditation by the North Central Association’s Higher Learning Commission (HLC).
Among other benefits to ASU, the accreditation certifies that the academic programs of ASU are suitable for federal financial aid, and that the university has the capacity to advance the quality of those programs. All ASU academic programs are covered by the HLC accreditation.
The goal of the review process is to establish how ASU meets HLC’s Criteria for Accreditation. As part of the preparation for this review, a university task force formed from across ASU’s four campuses developed a Self-Study Report over the past 45 months that documents the evidence that the institution meets the HLC criteria. More information on the process and access to the Self-Study Report are available at http://hlc2013.asu.edu.
The effort culminates this month with a comprehensive site visit on March 25-27.
Fifteen site visit team members from across the country will come to ASU to meet with key leaders and representatives of all operational areas of the institution, including academic programs, student and faculty quality, student services, budget and planning operations, ethical practices, and many other areas.
To help inform the site visit team about ideas and concerns from the ASU community, members of the site visit team will hold separate forums on Monday, March 25 for faculty members, staff employees and students on each of the four campuses.
These forums will be held on the Downtown, Polytechnic and West campuses with the following schedule:
Open faculty forum: 1:30-2:15 p.m.
Open staff forum: 2:45-3:30 p.m.
Open student forum: 3:30-4:15 p.m.
On the Tempe campus, the forum schedule will be:
Open faculty forum: 2:15-3 p.m.
Open staff forum: 3-3:45 p.m.
Open student forum: 3:45-4:30 p.m.
The four campus venues are:
Downtown Phoenix: Cronkite 444
Polytechnic: Cooley Ballroom B
Tempe: Carson Ballroom, Old Main
West: La Sala, UCB
"This input from the ASU community is vitally important to the accreditation review, so the team has made arrangements to be available on every campus to hear comments, suggestions and concerns,” said Barry Ritchie, vice provost for academic personnel and director of the university accreditation task force.
Following the March visit, the site visit team will report to HLC on whether ASU meets the standards required to continue its accreditation. The HLC will then act on that recommendation later this year.