UTRGV has submitted its Compliance Certification Report to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), the first step in the reaffirmation process.
SACSCOC is the regional body for the accreditation of degree-granting higher education institutions in the Southern states, according to its website.
UTRGV is accredited by SACSCOC to award bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees, according to its website.
Christine Shupala, associate vice president for Institutional Accreditation, said there are 13 different sections the report focuses on.
“For example, there’s a section on faculty, there’s a section on facilities, there’s a section on student support services, so we have to address all of the standards in each section and tell them what we do to make sure that we’re taking care of all of that appropriately,” Shupala said.
The report was submitted last month. In the next phase, an off-site review team will read the report and send feedback on any section they might have questions on.
Shupala said UTRGV will then write a Focused Report to answer questions and submit them in January.
“We will work with the subject matter experts on campus who also helped us to write the original standards, so if somebody comes back with a question on financial aid and what we do for financial aid, we would go to our Financial Aid Office and they would help us with that,” she said. “If somebody comes back with a question about our faculty, we would talk to our faculty affairs people and have them help us answer those questions, so it just kind of depends on which questions they have.”
Asked what the university can do at this point, Shupala said UTRGV will have to wait for the report to come back in order to take action.
She said the university is working on the Quality Enhancement Plan, the second portion of the reaffirmation process. Shupala said it is usually a project that they identify in order to help students be more successful.
“A lot of universities, they focus on ways that they can support students so that they can be retained and they can continue taking classes and they can graduate on time,” she said. “In some places, they focus on just very specific topics like ‘How do we help our students be better writers,’ or ‘How do we help our students learn more about the world’ or it’s up to the university to pick its topic based on the needs of its students and the university’s mission.”
When the compliance certification report and the QEP have been submitted and reviewed by the on-site teams, they will visit both campuses. The on-site team will visit UTRGV in March 2020 and meet with faculty, staff, administrators and students, according to a campuswide email Shupala sent Oct. 3.
The reaffirmation is awarded to member institutions every 10 years.
SACSCOC placed UTRGV under probationary status on Dec. 6, 2016, for not complying with 10 accreditation standards.
From Oct. 16 to 19, 2017, a SACSCOC special committee visited the UTRGV campuses to discuss the school’s probationary status.
As The Rider reported on Oct. 2, 2017, UTRGV President Guy Bailey said university officials successfully addressed each of the findings.
Although UTRGV addressed the 10 accreditation standards in 2016, the university remained on probation for one more year for failure to comply with a federal requirement about program responsibilities.
From Oct. 9 to 11, 2018, a SACSCOC committee visited the campus to make a final determination on reaffirmation of accreditation.
UTRGV addressed issues regarding the cash management process, special tests and return of Title IV funds, enrollment reporting and student loan repayment.
On Dec. 11, 2018, SACSCOC removed UTRGV from its probationary status after the university successfully addressed the agency’s Principle Accreditation federal requirement 4.7.
“The school has always been accredited and it’s still accredited,” President Bailey said in a phone interview on Dec. 11, 2018. “What it means now is that we don’t have to continually be monitored by the accrediting agency the same way we were. … We’ve always been accredited and probation just means that you’re being watched carefully and you have to prepare reports and you have to be evaluated. So, all of that is gone.”
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