Accreditation Tips
1. Know Your College's Mission
- Read the mission statement and reflect on its meaning.
- "To educate and inspire, providing our students with the opportunity to achieve their goals."
- Consider how the mission informs your work and the student experience.
- Understand the values embedded in the mission, such as access and opportunity.
2. Understand Accreditation
Know the College's learning goals and learning outcomes.
Understand accredditation expectations and how they apply to you:
3. Understand Your College's Coals
- Review your institution's vision, mission, values, and commitments.
- Know your college's current strategic plan and priorities.
- Review Institutional Learning Goals and Outcomes, and reflect upon how you use them in planning.
4. Engage In Assessment
- Become familiar with institutional learning outcomes.
- Utilize direct and indirect measures to assess effectiveness.
- Document results and draw inferences on evidence collected.
- Implement and document changes to enhance quality.
- Be Proactive, if you are planning any changes in your program or curricular offerings-locations, or success initiatives, contact Teddi (tlewisho@cscc.edu) or Darla (dvanhorn@cscc.edu) in the Office of Accreditation.
5. Understand and collect evidence
What is evidence? We say it---We do it---We improve it.
Evidence shows what we do, how well it works, and how we improve.
Strong evidence shows:
- What we did: policies, processes, implementation
- How it worked: data, outcomes, results
- What we improved: changes based on what we learned
Good evidence is:
- Real
- Current
- Documented
- Connected to outcomes
Examples:
- The college student success metrics based in cohorts or programs
- Tutoring/advising usage, impact improvement action (as appropriate)
- Program review action plans
- Meeting agendasminutes with decisions and follow-up
Tips:
- Start with your daily work
- Look for data + action together
- Show change over time
- Ask: Does this show impact?
Contact:
Teddi Lewis-Hotopp at tlewisho@cscc.edu
Darla Van Horn at dvanhorn@cscc.edu