This workshop is designed to launch your upcoming reaccreditation review process, to update you on the status of Commission decisions concerning changes to the review process, and to explain how these changes will affect your upcoming review for reaccreditation. 

Your review was originally scheduled to begin with a proposal, which was cancelled in 2011, followed by two visits, a Capacity and Preparatory Review visit in fall 2013 and an Educational Effectiveness Review visit 18 to 24 months later.  As you know from previous communications, the Commission adopted a new review process for reaccreditation, which involves an off-site review and a focused visit one or two terms later.  Your off-site review will be held in the term in which you were scheduled to have your CPR visit, fall 2013, and your visit will be in spring or fall 2014. Your self-study report is due 10 weeks before your off-site review, which will be about September 1, 2013.

We are holding a workshop for you and the other institutions with fall 2013 off-site reviews.  These institutions include:

•                 California State University, San Bernardino
•                 Sofia University
•                 Loyola Marymount University
•                 San Francisco Art Institute
•                 St. Mary’s College of California
•                 University of California at Berkeley
•                 University of Hawaii, Hilo

Institutions will be responsible for transportation and hotel expenses*.  WASC will provide the meeting room, materials, snacks, and lunch.    We encourage you to bring a small team of up to five people to attend this session.  A tentative agenda for the day is attached.

The revised Handbook of Accreditation, including the revised Standards of Accreditation and the detailed description of the review process, including required components and areas of emphases, will be released to institutions in the region in about a month.  We will hold public sessions to discuss the revisions during October and will collect and analyze written comments at two Commission meetings, in November and February.  The Handbook will be considered for final adoption in February 2013.

Because the Handbook will not be adopted in final form by the time you need to proceed with your self-study, starting in fall 2012, we will treat your cohort of institutions as participants in a pilot of the new process.  (You will be the second pilot group – the first pilot group of eight institutions has its off-site reviews in spring 2013.)  We will share the model for the pilot at the workshop in detail, as you can see from the agenda attached, and we will not expect you to shift your work midyear when the final version of the Handbook is adopted in February 2013.

As you know from other communications with the region, future accreditation reviews will involve a heightened emphasis on retention and graduation; in-depth presentation and analysis of the meaning, quality and integrity of the degrees you offer; and evidence of student learning in five core competencies cited in the Standards. 

Please feel free to Teri Cannon or your assigned liaison if you have any questions about the workshop or your upcoming review.

*The Oakland Holiday Inn will have a complimentary shuttle running every 30 minutes to the Oakland airport. Available at the terminal is a line direct to the hotel for more immediate shuttle services.