Accreditation team praises Penn State

University Park, Pa. -- Following a three-day visit in April, an evaluation team from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education praised Penn State for its commitment to undergraduate teaching and learning, the focus of the University's decennial re-accreditation review. The association will take formal action to re-accredit the University shortly.

"All faculty, staff and students at Penn State should be very pleased to receive this highly positive affirmation of the quality of education we are providing for our students," said Rodney Erickson, executive vice president and provost. Erickson will report briefly on the evaluation team's findings to the Board of Trustees who are meeting Friday, July 15, at Penn State's Delaware County campus.

A complete copy of the evaluation team's findings are posted at http://www.psu.edu/dept/vprov/Middle%20States/teamrpt.pdf online.

The five-member team, composed of college administrators from various institutions and chaired by William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University of Maryland system, visited University Park, eight campuses, the Penn State Dickinson School of Law and the College of Medicine. While at University Park, the team met with the administration, deans, faculty, students, members of the Faculty Senate and trustees. Among the subjects that the Middle States team investigated: student support services, educational offerings and general education, campus colleges, Distance Learning/Continued Education, Cooperative Extension and other educational endeavors and assessment of student learning.

The team noted "Faculty, staff and students at all locations of the University are proud to be a part of the Penn State 'family.' ... Being 'family' is to be a part of 'the excellence that is Penn State.'"

Furthermore, the team "was impressed by the remarkable spirit of pride in the institution as expressed by virtually every individual and group of faculty, staff and students we interviewed. The University's leadership enjoys broad-based and enthusiastic support. There appears to be an unusually high degree of alignment within the institution for the president's vision and goals," according to its final report.

The team praised the University's initiatives toward undergraduate teaching and learning excellence, singling out policies that reinforce those values as well as programs that support and award undergraduate research, the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence and the efforts of the Division of Information Technology Services, which is responsible for ANGEL and e-Lion.

The Faculty Senate also earned mention from the review team for the manner in which it manages University curriculum. The Senate's collaborative efforts with the administration to implement and reform curriculum as well as evaluate learning outcomes "is extraordinarily valuable," the report noted.

The Middle States Team remarked on student support services and diversity efforts: "A 'framework for diversity' has stimulated initiatives to increase diversity of the student body and to improve the integration of all students into campus life. The committee heard from students at the University Park campus that they had experienced a change in administrative, faculty and student responsiveness to 'hate incidents' during their tenure."

Accreditation is a voluntary process that offers institutions of higher education a means of self-regulation and peer review adopted by the educational community. The process takes place every 10 years.

"The report's conclusions recognize Penn State as an innovator and national leader in promoting more student-centered approaches to learning in higher education," Erickson said.

Penn State met the 14 eligibility requirements set forth in a preliminary Institutional Self-Study required by the Middles States commission. The self-study took three years for a University steering committee to complete. The self-study is done to "ensure that the University is meeting the eligibility requirements for accreditation," according to Louise Sandmeyer, executive director of the Office of Planning and Institutional Assessment, who was a member of the steering committee.

In recognition of President Graham B. Spanier's charge to the University to become more student-centered, the selected topics study was aimed at teaching and learning in undergraduate education. It also provided the University with an opportunity to measure progress toward that goal. Bob Secor, vice provost emeritus for Academic Affairs, chaired the 16-member steering committee. That committee provided oversight for six working subcommittees containing 35 faculty, staff and administrators.

"The primary mission of the steering committee was to develop procedures and generate text for a self-study report that would describe Penn State's efforts and challenges and make recommendations for improvement in the area of teaching and learning in undergraduate education," Secor said. "The impact was to generate discussion and thoughtful review concerning ongoing activities in teaching and learning; to achieve a coherent vision of these various activities that could be passed on to the academic community; and to identify the challenges Penn State is facing in these areas as well as strategies to meet them. Moreover, the document itself gave the Middle States Evaluation Team the necessary information and background for its review and recommendations."

The three-year report generated several insights for the steering committee. "We learned how committed we are at every level to helping our students become active participants in their learning and to take responsibility for their intellectual, civic and moral growth," Secor said. "We were struck by how every section of our report was impacted by Penn State's embrace of the opportunities offered by technology. In addition, one of the advantages of such a full-scale self-study was that it allowed the University to be fully cognizant of how various campuses and colleges support its central mission, while at the same time presenting a number of best practices that can be shared and emulated at every college and location."

The findings in this report will be used to strengthen further the University's efforts in learning outcomes assessment, according to Erickson, who said, "We will move forward with an assessment strategic plan that builds upon existing accomplishments and incorporates new ideas, one that weaves Penn State's many best practices into strategies to achieve wider impact."

Information regarding the Middle States Association, the University's self-study and other documents pertaining to accreditation may be found on the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs' Web site at http://www.psu.edu/dept/vprov/Middle%20States/mdl%20states.htm