What is Accreditation and what does it mean for you?
Over the past two years, you may have seen periodic updates about Rutgers’ accreditation process. At first glance, this may seem far removed from graduate student concerns, but accreditation does have implications for your life as a graduate student and as a future faculty member.

What is accreditation?
Accreditation is a process that gives public notification that Rutgers meets the set of quality standards set forth by an accrediting agency. Rutgers is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, one of six nationally recognized regional accrediting agencies. According to Dean Barbara Bender, “Regional accreditation provides colleges and universities with the opportunity to meet with higher education colleagues from other institutions to discuss issues pertaining to the degree to which an institution is meeting its goals. The insights provided by members of accrediting teams can be invaluable in aiding universities in their planning and decision-making.”

For the past two years, Rutgers has been preparing an extensive self-study report for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. A team of external peer reviewers has been examining this study and the process will culminate with a site visit to Rutgers March 9-12, 2008. The self-study demonstrates a commitment on the part of Rutgers not only to assess what the university is currently doing, but also to continually seek ways to enhance and improve the academic offerings of the university. In short, accreditation is critical to maintaining the good stature of the university, and ensures that your degree is taken seriously and is of value to you after graduation.

What is included in the self-study?
Rutgers has elected to use Middle States Option 1 for the 2008 re-accreditation self-study document. This allows the university to study several selected areas of university operations in depth for the self-study rather than exhaustively address every aspect of university operations included in the Middle States standards. The self-study for Rutgers’ 2008 re-accreditation addresses 6 major topics: (1) Undergraduate Admissions and Student Support Services; (2) Undergraduate Educational Offerings, General Education, and Related Educational Activities; (3) Using the Research/Graduate Context to Enhance Undergraduate Education; (4) Assessment of Undergraduate Student Learning; (5) Education and Research in an Urban Setting; (6) Selective Self-Study of Specific Aspects of Governance. The remaining Middle States standards were reviewed by document generalists during an earlier site visit in October 2007.

In so far as the self-study deals with the New Brunswick/Piscataway campuses, it addresses the vast changes that have taken place in Rutgers undergraduate education in the past 10 years. In 1980, Rutgers united several distinct colleges into a single university faculty. The amount of complex infrastructure that remained from this union, where students were still admitted to one of Rutgers, Livingston, Douglass, or University “colleges” individually, allowed students more opportunities, but also more red tape to navigate. As a result of the work of the Task Force on Undergraduate Education in 2005, beginning in Fall 2007 students at Rutgers were the first admitted to a university with one student body, and much less restrictions. This purposeful unification means that Rutgers will operate as one cohesive entity rather than several separate entities tied together. The university is currently in the process of developing a single undergraduate curriculum to apply to all undergraduate liberal arts students.

This focus on undergraduate education does not ignore the role of graduate students. The study also includes a section on the benefits to undergraduates of working alongside graduate students, stating, “Undergraduates come into contact with graduate students in their classrooms and laboratories as teachers and mentors…. Graduate student instruction and TA interactions are not the only ways that undergraduates come into contact with graduate students. The use of graduate students as mentors in research labs is an integral part of undergraduate science education.” The university clearly recognizes the vital role of graduate students as teachers in the culture of Rutgers as a major research institution.

Other points of the study may be of particular interest to graduate students both as future faculty, and also in that they lay out university-wide ideals for what a Rutgers undergraduate education should accomplish. As a Teaching Assistant, you are a part of that educational mission, and so these topics do directly relate to you as a current instructor and what you teach.

What implication does this have for the future?
Beyond detailing Rutgers’ activities in each of the areas above, “The self-study’s utility is also intended to last beyond the present, a time marked by intense activity intended to transform undergraduate education and its organizational structure, to serve as a guide for institutional planning, change, and growth over the course of the next 10 years.” (Executive summary of the self-study).

A large focus of the accreditation process focuses on cultivating a “culture of assessment” at Rutgers. This focus determines how to measure and demonstrate student learning. More specifically, with the increase of technology available to the university, it is possible to collect and collate much larger quantities of data about student learning than was possible before. Further, the national university culture demands that schools find ways to demonstrate what makes a degree from that institution distinct.

According to Dean Barbara Bender,

“It used to be that regional accrediting agencies asked this one question: Is the university doing what it says it is doing? Now the additional question is asked: And, how do they measure the outcomes?

Assessment is a key component across the accreditation spectrum, from regional to specialized accreditation associations. Colleges and universities are expected to be able to identify their goals, implement plans to achieve the goals, and then measure and document the extent to which the goals are met.

The most important goal is student learning and what are they learning. How can we say that enrollment at one institution is different from another? How do we measure our outcomes?”

The Rutgers Center for Teaching Advancement and Assessment Research (CTAAR) is currently reviewing the assessment strategies used at Rutgers and making recommendations for how to continue this detailed assessment in the future. The standards decided upon by the university in conjunction with its accreditation can have ramifications for how undergraduate education is conducted and measured in the future, and how you measure student learning and are required to teach in the future.

Accreditation is an ongoing process. The recommendations of the Middle States Commission will be given after March’s site visit. You can learn about the Rutgers re-accreditation process, read the university’s self study report, and more at http://middlestates.rutgers.edu.