Kelly in Kansas

Monday has arrived again and we're already halfway through the semester. I've revised our department's report for both of our national accreditation agencies but still managed to stay ahead on the rest of my responsibilities and I think I'm still a bit in shock given that each of those reports by itself is enough to derail a semester or even an academic year. Now, if there were only a way to make clear to students all the tasks we professors undertake outside the classroom to make their educations possible. 

Our department is in transition from the "old guard" to the "new guard" and the evolutions in policy that better serve the students we have now that come with this transitions. In some cases, the "old guard" preferred personal guidance to policy guidance but, as the times change, it's become more clear that we need more policy given that it can be more consistently applied to every student in a particular program. 


The program I'm responsible for "administering" or "overseeing" is much more definitely guided by state and federal mandates, even though either can change at any time. It's an interesting contrast to other programs in the department that are either much more "wide open" or answer to another entity on campus that may or may not have clearly delineated policies. No matter what the parameters are that were are given as professors who do much more than teach every day, we do our best to keep students at the forefront of what we are doing given that, in these days of economic challenge, they literally are not only our bread but also our butter. Now, to help students better understand how much we do for them each and every day.

Labels: accreditation, assessment, new guard, old guard, programs, state programs, students, transition

Here's a snippet of the conversation over at Conversations of a Community College Dean:

Regional or National Accreditation?

In a comment a few days ago in response to my misgivings about a national online database of classes, someone raised the question of why we still have a regional, as opposed to national, accreditation system.

The short answer is, I have absolutely no idea. My best guess is inertia; regional accreditors emerged long ago, and gradually accrued a certain legitimacy. Now, certain regional accreditors are simply accepted as 'legitimate' – North Central, Middle States, NEASC, SACS, etc. The national accreditors that currently exist are generally held in much lower esteem throughout most of higher ed, to the extent that they get any respect at all.

 Read more, including my comment, here.

Labels: accreditation, colleges of education, credits, Dean Dad, transfer, universities

Thanks to Sherman Dorn for this post.

Having been involved in the trenches of quantitative vs. qualitative data for evaluating pre-service teacher candidates and providing proof of our university's program for state and federal accrediting agencies, I am still struggling with how to deal with undefined data or, at best, constantly changing "goals". Am still clarifying my thoughts but I am convinced that not all of it is in the best interests of everyone involved. Some of the same political processes that blocked previous reform attempts are also keeping current efforts from being effective and/or correctly implemented. More thoughts later . . . am trying to take a few days to recover from an intense semester before the craziness of summer institutes starts.

Labels: accreditation, data, qualitative, quantitative, Sherman Dorn, students, teacher candidates, teacher education

Dean Dad has an interesting question about what students expect from faculty and faculty's other demands. My response which is just the tip of the iceberg of a longer post follows:

As a faculty member who's been involved in both North Central re-accreditation and NCATE (teacher ed) re-accreditation, I have seen it so overwhelm faculty that it prevents them from doing the other parts of their job while it is going on. Depending on how often that is determines whether it is a good or bad thing.

The most challenging aspect was the resentment of other faculty who didn't want anything to do with it toward those who believed it was part of what they had to do - esp. to keep a particular program viable in the age of budget cuts. There are still too many within higher education (primarily faculty) who think, "I have tenure, I know what I need to do" without understanding we do need to at least keep some binoculars handy to keep an eye on what is going on in the rest of the world - esp. the world we are preparing students to enter that is much different than the world in which we were students.

Sherm makes an excellent point about accountability and it would be interesting if another read can place current events within the historical framework for us.

There's also another interesting point - in some cases (and definitely not in others), having Grad Student or Adjunct X teach a course gets more actual teaching done than is automatically done by a group of professors - esp. those who see teaching as the least of their responsibilities. As usual, a whole multitude of issues in the question asked

Labels: accreditation, Dean Dad, faculty, NCA, NCATE, North Central, teacher education, teaching