Photo illustration by Mario Gonzalez
UTRGV Faculty Senate President Bobbette Morgan told The Rider today that the senate’s executive committee plans to meet with President Guy Bailey no later than Monday to discuss the school’s probationary status.
“Basically, we want to know what happened,” Morgan said. “He did talk to me about it. … When we meet with the president, I think he understands he needs to talk to the faculty and clarify exactly what happened and why.”
Earlier today, Bailey emailed the campus community informing it that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges placed UTRGV on probation for the next 12 months.
“We have not gotten the specific letter from [SACSCOC], and so, the details of what they’re going to have in there, I don’t know yet,” he said in an interview earlier today. “I don’t expect them until mid-January. The issues all relate to the timing sequence that’s described in the second paragraph in that [email].”
Pamela Cravey, SACSCOC coordinator of Communications and External Affairs, told The Rider today the university is not compliant with several accreditation standards:
–Integrity (Principle 1.1)
–Acceptance of academic credits (Comprehensive standards 3.4.4)
–Consortial relationships/contractual agreements (Comprehensive standards 3.4.7)
–Institutional credits for a degree (Comprehensive standards 3.5.2)
–Institutional credits for a graduate degree (Comprehensive standards 3.6.3)
–Financial aid audits (Comprehensive standards 3.10.2)
–Substantive change (Comprehensive standards 3.12.1)
–Advertising, Student Recruitment, and Representation of Accredited Status policy compliance, (Comprehensive standards 3.13)
–Publication of accreditation status (Comprehensive standards 3.14.1)
–Recruitment materials (Federal requirement 4.6)
“[The probationary status] shouldn’t really change anything at the student and faculty level except for the people who are working on resolving it, which, for the most part, will be administrators, but there may be faculty and staff involved as well,” Cravey said. “So, there are changes that the institution either needs to make in the procedure or that they need to document their procedure better.”
In the president’s email, he states that there were some timing issues involved, which included “the amalgamation of the assets of UT Brownsville and UT Pan American [and] the dissolution of the UTB and Texas Southmost College partnership.”
“Remember that TSC accreditation didn’t occur until very late,” Bailey said. “It was just a timing issue there. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It’s just the legislation laid out a timeline and then, TSC had to work on its own to get its accreditation. There were just two different timelines. That created some difficulties for us.”
The SACSCOC is the regional body for the accreditation of degree-granting higher education institutions in the Southern states and announced the decision to award separate accreditation to TSC at the 2015 SACSCOC Annual Meeting.
Asked how the Faculty Senate feels about the university being placed on probation by the SACSCOC, Morgan replied: “We were very surprised to hear it. We had not heard anything in advance of the announcement this morning. But, I already spoke with the president this morning as a follow-up and he reassured me that he has notified the faculty within 24 hours of when he received the information.”
Bailey said the university will remain fully accredited throughout the probation period, which he was informed of by the SACSCOC on Monday.
“Until we receive the letter, we won’t know specifically how to proceed,” he said. “[SACSCOC] will work with us. … This is an issue we can easily resolve over the next year. Everybody’s degree is safe. The institution is still accredited. We knew that there were issues related to timing. Once we get their letter, we’ll lay out a specific plan, work closely with them and get this all resolved.”
Bailey said being placed on probation will not affect UTRGV’s funding requests during the upcoming Texas legislative session, recruiting and retaining students and faculty, and the School of Medicine’s accreditation process.
“[SACSCOC] wants to examine what we’re doing more closely,” he said. “So, they’ll send a team to campus sometime in the fall to take a look at whatever issues they have. … We’ll have a plan for dealing with this and we take it very seriously, but I think it’s not something we should worry about. We’ll address those issues and in a year, we should be off.”
