The College Prepares for Accreditation
Katharine Eneguess, President of White Mountains Community CollegeAt the end of every semester here at White Mountains Community College our students are given their final grades. Most of the time students are not surprised by their grades. Our faculty is very good at giving students feedback on their performances over the course of the semester, so if a student is weak in a certain area he or she can take the honest assessment from the teacher and use it to improve before those final grades are calculated.
We can all use constructive criticism now and then, as we strive to do better at what we do. That is true, too, of us here at White Mountains Community College, and while we don’t officially get graded at the end of every semester, we do have a process we go through on a regular basis in order to make sure we keep striving for, and maintain excellence.
On June 4 the chair of the accreditation visiting team of the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education (CIHE) of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges made a preliminary site visit to the college. Dianne Williams, President of Quinebaug Valley Community College in Connecticut is leading the team which will visit our college for several days in October.
The College's last accreditation visit was in April 2003. After the 2003 visit we were granted initial accreditation as a comprehensive community college through CIHE. It is a standard practice that all colleges and universities go through the accreditation process every ten years. It is also standard practice that following initial accreditation in CIHE, that our first full comprehensive evaluation would be after five years, which brings us to October 2008. This also marks the first time we will be accredited as a stand-alone college, White Mountains Community College. We remain part of the Community College System of New Hampshire but are no longer fiscally or programmatically connected to the Lakes Region Community College, as we were in 2003.
As part of the accreditation process we are preparing a 100 page report for the visiting team. The Standards for Accreditation cover all aspects of what makes a college effective in its mission, from assessment of student learning, teaching and advising, student services, to physical and technological resources, and financial resources. The report will address each of the 11 standards of accreditation, by use of description, appraisal and projection sections. The report is a good self-assessment, “snap shot in time” tool that the visiting team will use when they interview people to find out if we are in fact doing what we say we are doing.
The steering committee organized for the preparation of the report began meeting in the fall of 2006 and a draft of the report was finished this spring. In a couple months, the report will be uploaded to our website so that the community can review it and comment on it. This is an opportunity for us to learn and grow, an opportunity to talk with a team of peers from around New England about best practices in education, share and learn from each other and keep our motto of continuous improvement as our focus. It also helps us keep the higher educational and skill building needs of our region at the forefront of our work.
We look forward to the October visit of the visiting team, and to their peer review. The report, along with the notification from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges about accreditation status, is our report card.
The commission (CIHE) has the same expectations as we do – that we will work to continually improve the quality and effectiveness of our programs and our College as we strive toward excellence.
Back to News List6/27/2008
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