Vassar continues self-study for reaccreditation

Hayley Tsukayama Staff Writer

The College’s Middle States Review Steering Committee, which conducted a comprehensive self-study of every academic aspect of the College this year, is currently compiling its findings and will report them next December.

The College must reapply for accreditation from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE). In order to do so, it must collect and organize information for a comprehensive self-report, addressing everything from the faculty to the College’s financial structure, and submit it to the MSCHE for approval.

After receiving and reviewing the report, a representative from the MSCHE will visit the campus in Spring 2009.

In the meantime the College has been pushing forward with its assessment. The full report will be compiled and revised this summer, and a final draft will be submitted to the MSCHE in December.
Nancy J. Vickers, outgoing President of Bryn Mawr College, will lead the visiting assessment team.
According to Committee Chair and Professor of English Robert DeMaria Jr. the Vassar self-study emphasizes strategic planning and assessment.

“We have to look at the mission statement,” DeMaria said, “and tell them how well we’re achieving it and how.”

While it is more or less guaranteed that the College will be reaccredited, many consider this an excellent way for Vassar College to reflect on its own progress throughout the past decade and plan improvements for the future.

“When you start looking at things globally,” said DeMaria, “you realize how difficult it is to keep our beautiful little corner of the world—how expensive it is and how many things are involved running this institution.”

The report will feature seven chapters, each of which will focus on a particular aspect of the College: finance, organization and governance, academic programming, faculty, financial aid, College services and community relations. To expedite the review process, members of the Steering Committee chaired nine sub-review committees, each of which examined a different aspect of the College in closer detail.

The Committee also includes Dean of Planning and Academic Affairs Rachel Kitzinger (who was placed on the Committee as a Professor of Classics), Assistant to the President John Feroe, Associate Dean of the College Raymon Parker and Director of Institutional Research David Davis Van Atta.

Vassar Student Association (VSA) Vice President for Academics Jessica Cho ’08 and VSA President Sam Charner ’08 are the only student representatives serving on the Committee.

DeMaria said that, based on the report, he believes that the faculty committee system may need to be rethought. “It’s great to have so much faculty involvement, but we need to ask if it’s functioning effectively,” he said. He believes that the results produced by so many large committees “may not be worth the hundreds of man hours” put into them.

“The process has been really interesting,” said Charner. “It’s rare that we have an opportunity to look at the College holistically like this.”

DeMaria agreed, saying that he “now has a much fuller, more rounded, more comprehensive view of the College,” given that his colleagues and those on sub-committees sit on several committees of their own and provide a full range of perspectives on the College.

Cho said that this is perhaps the most valuable side effect of the self-study. “It’s good to bring it all in like this…to look at one issue and look at how it trickles down across the College.”

She said that being on the Committee has given her more perspective on the other committees she is a part of and that she is now able to “take on issues more effectively.”