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By Larry B. Dendy
ldendy@uga.edu
After nearly two years of closely scrutinizing virtually every aspect of its operations, the   university is confident it deserves reaccreditation from its major accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Now UGA is ready to make its case to members of a SACS accreditation team who will be on campus later this month.
The decennial self-study, begun in late 1998, is essentially complete. The results, contained in a three-volume, two-inch-thick report, show a university with significant strengths and boundless potential—and some shortcomings that must be addressed.
“I’m confident we meet all the standards for accreditation, but that’s not the major value of this exercise,” says self-study director Bob Boehmer. “Its biggest contribution is that it creates a sense of community and a sense of collective ownership of the direction in which the university is headed.”
UGA, like all major universities, must conduct an in-depth self-study every 10 years to retain accreditation from SACS. Part of the exercise requires demonstrating compliance with specific SACS criteria that are contained in some 500 “must/should statements.” These statements prescribe standards the university must meet in all phases of its academic and administrative operations.
In addition, UGA decided to focus its self-study on one of its chief 21stcentury goals—improving the educational experience of undergraduate students. The examination centered on four areas that strongly affect undergraduate education: physical facilities, undergraduate research, information technology and general factors that affect the quality of the undergraduate experience.
Boehmer says some 200 faculty and staff members, administrators and students spent thousands of hours over 18 months collecting information, conducting interviews and reviewing and discussing data in an estimated 250 meetings.
Peggy Kreshel, associate director and editor of the self-study, compiled findings from study groups into an executive summary, a point-by-point response to the 500 must/should statements and a report on improving undergraduate education.
A SACS accreditation team composed of professors and administrators from other universities will be on campus Feb. 25–28 to evaluate the self-study work. The team will review the reports, tour campus facilities and meet with members of self-study committees and other faculty, staff and students. Following the visit, the team will decide whether UGA should retain SACS accreditation.
The university is confident of getting reaccredited, but the real value of the self-study lies in the insights and information revealed by the intense examination and the collective determination of faculty, staff and students to turn the findings into action that advances UGA, Boehmer says.
“If you were to ask, ‘Is this the most efficient way to produce a document?’ clearly the answer is no,” says Boehmer. “But the whole point is not to be blindly efficient but to get a lot of input from a lot of people so the end product is something those people own.”
The 291-page report on improving the undergraduate experience contains dozens of recommendations, ranging from doubling the number of students living on campus to providing funds through a centralized undergraduate research office to supporting faculty and their students in research efforts. The report on compliance with SACS criteria, some 370 pages long, includes a number of suggestions for strengthening operating procedures.
Boehmer says many of the recommendations and suggestions fit closely with the university’s 10-year strategic plan and physical master plan, which were being created almost simultaneously with the self-study.
While the self-study was under way, the university has also been preparing for a required peer review of its athletic program by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. An NCAA review team will come to campus at the time of the SACS team visit to evaluate the athletic program.
Visiting SACS team members will probably add their own suggestions to those in the reports, Boehmer says. The next step for the self-study steering committee will be to see that all the recommendations and suggestions are assigned to the person, office or organization that can implement them.
“The fact that this report could become a dust collector has been anticipated by the steering committee,” Boehmer says. “We have to create the follow-up mechanisms to ensure that doesn’t happen.
“We believe that follow-up will take place,” Boehmer adds, “because the university won’t feel this is a series of orders imposed on us. We will feel this is a vision we created, and now it’s time to roll up our sleeves and bring it to reality.”
Boehmer expressed appreciation to the chairs of the major self-study committees for their leadership. They are Jeffrey Kotzan, compliance; Josef Broder, quality of undergraduate experience; Robert Reinert, physical facilities; Brenda Manning, undergraduate research; Joe Crim, information technology; and Sylvia Pannell, Clifton Smith and Tommy Altman, logistics for the visiting SACS team. |
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