Introduction

Newsletter                    

Resources

Committee Portal

Accreditation Timeline

Criterion Committees:
Criterion 1
Criterion 2
Criterion 3
Criterion 4
Criterion 5

HLC/NCA STEERING COMMITTEE
Phoenix College
Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - 1:30 p.m.
Administrative Conference Room

Meeting Notes

Present: Jan B., Queta C., Karen C., Corina G., Marian G., Brent J., Morris J., Casandra K., Nancy M., Reed M., Mike M., Jim M. Mike M., Ann R., Dennis S., Denny S.

Brent began the meeting by having everyone introduce themselves since we have several new members on the Steering Committee.

Then the committee was presented with an updated and detailed timeline. It is important to remember that the timeline is a working document. It is to be used as an indication of the work that has been done and what will be done. If there are changes to the timeline please let Brent or Marian G. know.

Marian G. has been putting together a presentation of various slides that give an overview of the whole Self-Study process, including the goals, criteria, overview, and definitions of what things are. Everyone received a copy of these slides and was informed that the whole idea of this selection of slides is for presentations so that if anyone needs them they can just go to the website and retrieve them. Marian has given two presentations so far: one at the President’s Roundtable, where she presented an update of NCA to community members and faculty; the other to a group of visiting faculty members from Mexico on the topic of what is accreditation? She discussed how Phoenix College is going about the process, what the basis is in the United States, etc.

Next Brent informed the committee of the feedback received in August regarding the Self-Study design that was submitted in April 2004. Some of the comments that were received were that at first look the committee structure looks to be cumbersome, but it appears that it is working for us and that we need to be more evaluative rather than descriptive.

Brent and Marian have met with Nancy and Patricia to come up with an outline for the writing of the actual Self-Study, they handed out a sheet that demonstrates the process and explained it to the committee.

The Second HLC Open House will be October 20. There will be flyers and emails. For the Open House each Criterion Chair will come up with an idea for their individual areas. We have decided to also fold into Criterion Three the eight outcome committees for assessment.

The idea of a theme was discussed and it was decided that Nancy and the writers will work on creating one with the help of Morris J.

Diane Nyhammer, staff liaison for NCA will be on campus January 13 and 14, 2005. She will meet with the various groups on campus, i.e. President, faculty, Faculty Senate, etc. She will give us input on what has been done so far. The purpose of the visit is for her to steer us in the right direction and make sure that we are on track.

Next the committee came up with a list of the different team competencies that we would like to see in the group that comes out to evaluate us. This is our opportunity to give some input so that NCA knows who to select for the site visit. The following are the things that the committee thought were important attributes for the people evaluating us to have experience in:

• Diversity
• Multilingual
• Occupational
• Urban in an urban core
• Hispanic serving
• Size of institution
• Service excellence (learning)
• Independently governed but within the district, multi-college organization
• Liberal arts
• Mission and goals as lead
• Make sure to include CCC, CTE and on-line classes, showing that they aren’t confined into the campus
• Age: mature colleges
• Learning communities
• Strategic planning: someone who has experience in planning
• Experience with tenure

We need to begin identifying areas where we need the consultation, ex. Hybrid courses, or areas that we have not chartered but wish to. The idea is for the consultants to come in and help us strengthen the areas we want.

When writing the report we need to be sure to use evaluative language and not descriptive. It does not need to be a huge volume, need to look at a succinct approach. It is important to make sure that we look at everything in an evaluative manner. Nancy has the first drafts from three of the criteria, the writers will revise these drafts, Patricia will edit, then we will send them to Dianne to receive feedback.

After this each chair gave a brief update of where their committee is at:

• Denny – they are continuing to gather statistical information that lends itself to evaluative language. They have been meeting once a month but are changing the meetings to every two weeks.
• Ann – in the process of gathering information and deciding what data they need.  
• Mike – They have drafts of 3A and 3B and will be discussing these drafts at the next meeting. For 3C they are collecting data and will be done with that by the end of October. They are still working on 3D and from there they will focus on reviewing everything that has been done.
• Karen –They have drafted 4D and written the introduction. She has identified an understudy for the next Self-Study for Criterion 4 – Rita Perry.
• Queta – they have finished 5A-D and have a set of questions for interviewing and are in the process of assigning tasks.

There was a discussion that a document should be created as reference for the next Self-Study with recommendations, especially when it comes to archiving data. Included should be what did or did not work. It was agreed that all of this should come out of the debriefing.

Meeting adjourned.