The organization operates with integrity to ensure the fulfillment of its mission
through structures and processes that involve the board, administration, faculty,
staff, and students.
Core Component 1a: The organization's mission documents are clear
and articulate publicly the organization's commitments.
Examples of Evidence
The board has adopted statements of mission, vision, values, goals, and
organizational priorities that together clearly and broadly define the organization's
mission.
The mission, vision, values, and goals documents define the varied internal
and external constituencies in the organization.
The mission documents include a strong commitment to high academic standards
that sustain and advance excellence.
The mission documents state goals for the learning to be achieved by its
students.
The organization regularly evaluates and, when appropriate, revises the
mission documents.
The organization makes the mission documents available to the public, particularly
to prospective and enrolled students.
Core Component 1b: In its mission documents, the organization recognizes
the diversity of its learners, other constituencies, and the greater society
it serves.
Examples of Evidence
In its mission documents, the organization addresses diversity within the
community values and common purposes it considers fundamental to its mission.
The mission documents present the organization's function in a multicultural
society.
The mission documents affirm the organization's commitment to honor
the dignity and worth of individuals.
The organization's required codes of belief or expected behavior
are congruent with its mission.
The mission documents provide a basis for the organization's basic
strategies to address diversity.
Core Component 1c: Understanding of and support for the mission pervade
the organization.
Examples of Evidence
The board, administration, faculty, staff, and students understand and
support the organization's mission.
The organization's strategic decisions are mission-driven.
The organization's planning and budgeting priorities flow from and
support the mission.
The goals of the administrative and academic subunits of the organization
are congruent with the organization's mission.
The organization's internal constituencies articulate the mission
in a consistent manner.
Core Component 1d: The organization's governance and administrative structures
promote effective leadership and support collaborative processes that enable
the organization to fulfill its mission.
Examples of Evidence
Board policies and practices document the board's focus on the organization's
mission.
The board enables the organization's chief administrative personnel
to exercise effective leadership.
The distribution of responsibilities as defined in governance structures,
processes, and activities is understood and is implemented through delegated
authority.
People within the governance and administrative structures are committed
to the mission and appropriately qualified to carry out their defined responsibilities.
Faculty and other academic leaders share responsibility for the coherence
of the curriculum and the integrity of academic processes.
Effective communication facilitates governance processes and activities.
The organization evaluates its structures and processes regularly and strengthens
them as needed.
Core Component 1e: The organization upholds and protects its integrity.
Examples of Evidence
The activities of the organization are congruent with its mission.
The board exercises its responsibility to the public to ensure that the
organization operates legally, responsibly, and with fiscal honesty.
The organization understands and abides by local, state, and federal laws
and regulations applicable to it (or bylaws and regulations established by
federally recognized sovereign entities).
The organization consistently implements clear and fair policies regarding
the rights and responsibilities of each of its internal constituencies.
The organization's structures and processes allow it to ensure the
integrity of its co-curricular and auxiliary activities.
The organization deals fairly with its external constituents.
The organization presents itself accurately and honestly to the public.
The organization documents timely response to complaints and grievances,
particularly those of students.
The organization's allocation of resources and its processes for evaluation
and planning demonstrate its capacity to fulfill its mission, improve the quality
of its education, and respond to future challenges and opportunities.
Core Component 2a: The organization realistically prepares for a future
shaped by multiple societal and economic trends.
Examples of Evidence
The organization's planning documents reflect a sound understanding
of the organization's current capacity.
The organization's planning documents demonstrate that attention
is being paid to emerging factors such as technology, demographic shifts,
and globalization.
The organization's planning documents show careful attention to the
organization's function in a multicultural society.
The organization's planning processes include effective environmental
scanning.
The organizational environment is supportive of innovation and change.
The organization incorporates in its planning those aspects of its history
and heritage that it wishes to preserve and continue.
The organization clearly identifies authority for decision making about
organizational goals.
Core Component 2b: The organization's resource base supports
its educational programs and its plans for maintaining and strengthening their
quality in the future.
Examples of Evidence
The organization's resources are adequate for achievement of the
educational quality it claims to provide.
Plans for resource development and allocation document an organizational
commitment to supporting and strengthening the quality of the education it
provides.
The organization uses its human resources effectively.
The organization intentionally develops its human resources to meet future
changes.
The organization's history of financial resource development and
investment documents a forward-looking concern for ensuring educational quality
(e.g., investments in faculty development, technology, learning support services,
new or renovated facilities).
The organization's planning processes are flexible enough to respond
to unanticipated needs for program reallocation, downsizing, or growth.
The organization has a history of achieving its planning goals.
Core Component 2c: The organization's ongoing evaluation and
assessment processes provide reliable evidence of institutional effectiveness
that clearly informs strategies for continuous improvement.
Examples of Evidence
The organization demonstrates that its evaluation processes provide evidence
that its performance meets its stated expectations for institutional effectiveness.
The organization maintains effective systems for collecting, analyzing,
and using organizational information.
Appropriate data and feedback loops are available and used throughout the
organization to support continuous improvement.
Periodic reviews of academic and administrative subunits contribute to
improvement of the organization.
The organization provides adequate support for its evaluation and assessment
processes.
Core Component 2d: All levels of planning align with the organization's
mission, thereby enhancing its capacity to fulfill that mission.
Examples of Evidence
Coordinated planning processes center on the mission documents that define
vision, values, goals, and strategic priorities for the organization.
Planning processes link with budgeting processes.
Implementation of the organization's planning is evident in its operations.
Long-range strategic planning processes allow for reprioritization of goals
when necessary because of changing environments.
Planning documents give evidence of the organization's awareness
of the relationships among educational quality, student learning, and the
diverse, complex, global, and technological world in which the organization
and its students exist.
Planning processes involve internal constituents and, where appropriate,
external constituents.
Criterion Three: Student Learning and Effective Teaching
The organization provides evidence of student learning and teaching effectiveness
that demonstrates it is fulfilling its educational mission.
Core Component 3a: The organization's goals for student learning
outcomes are clearly stated for each educational program and make effective
assessment possible.
Examples of Evidence
The organization clearly differentiates its learning goals for undergraduate,
graduate, and post-baccalaureate programs by identifying the expected learning
outcomes for each.
Assessment of student learning provides evidence at multiple levels: course,
program, and institutional.
Assessment of student learning includes multiple direct and indirect measures
of student learning.
Results obtained through assessment of student learning are available to
appropriate constituencies, including students themselves.
The organization integrates into its assessment of student learning the
data reported for purposes of external accountability (e.g., graduation rates,
passage rates on licensing exams, placement rates, transfer rates).
The organization's assessment of student learning extends to all
educational offerings, including credit and noncredit certificate programs.
Faculty are involved in defining expected student learning outcomes and
creating the strategies to determine whether those outcomes are achieved.
Faculty and administrators routinely review the effectiveness and uses
of the organization's program to assess student learning.
Core Component 3b: The organization values and supports effective teaching.
Examples of Evidence
Qualified faculty determine curricular content and strategies for instruction.
The organization supports professional development designed to facilitate
teaching suited to varied learning environments.
The organization evaluates teaching and recognizes effective teaching.
The organization provides services to support improved pedagogies.
The organization demonstrates openness to innovative practices that enhance
learning.
The organization supports faculty in keeping abreast of the research on
teaching and learning, and of technological advances that can positively affect
student learning and the delivery of instruction.
Faculty members actively participate in professional organizations relevant
to the disciplines they teach.
Core Component 3c: The organization creates effective learning environments.
Examples of Evidence
Assessment results inform improvements in curriculum, pedagogy, instructional
resources, and student services.
The organization provides an environment that supports all learners and
respects the diversity they bring.
Advising systems focus on student learning, including the mastery of skills
required for academic success.
Student development programs support learning throughout the student's
experience regardless of the location of the student.
The organization employs, when appropriate, new technologies that enhance
effective learning environments for students.
The organization's systems of quality assurance include regular review
of whether its educational strategies, activities, processes, and technologies
enhance student learning.
Core Component 3d: The organization's learning resources support
student learning and effective teaching.
Examples of Evidence
The organization ensures access to the resources (e.g., research laboratories,
libraries, performance spaces, clinical practice sites) necessary to support
learning and teaching.
The organization evaluates the use of its learning resources to enhance
student learning and effective teaching.
The organization regularly assesses the effectiveness of its learning resources
to support learning and teaching.
The organization supports students, staff, and faculty in using technology
effectively.
The organization provides effective staffing and support for its learning
resources.
The organization's systems and structures enable partnerships and
innovations that enhance student learning and strengthen teaching effectiveness.
Budgeting priorities reflect that improvement in teaching and learning
is a core value of the organization.
Criterion Four: Acquisition, Discovery, and Application of Knowledge
The organization promotes a life of learning for its faculty, administration,
staff, and students by fostering and supporting inquiry, creativity, practice,
and social responsibility in ways consistent with its mission.
Core Component 4a: The organization demonstrates, through the actions
of its board, administrators, students, faculty, and staff, that it values a
life of learning.
Examples of Evidence
The board has approved and disseminated statements supporting freedom of
inquiry for the organization's students, faculty, and staff, and honors
those statements in its practices.
The organization's planning and pattern of financial allocation demonstrate
that it values and promotes a life of learning for its students, faculty,
and staff.
The organization supports professional development opportunities and makes
them available to all of its administrators, faculty, and staff.
The organization publicly acknowledges the achievements of students and
faculty in acquiring, discovering, and applying knowledge.
The faculty and students, in keeping with the organization's mission,
produce scholarship and create knowledge through basic and applied research.
The organization and its units use scholarship and research to stimulate
organizational and educational improvements.
Core Component 4b: The organization demonstrates that acquisition of
a breadth of knowledge and skills and the exercise of intellectual inquiry are
integral to its educational programs.
Examples of Evidence
The organization integrates general education into all of its undergraduate
degree programs through curricular and experiential offerings intentionally
created to develop the attitudes and skills requisite for a life of learning
in a diverse society.
The organization regularly reviews the relationship between its mission
and values and the effectiveness of its general education.
The organization assesses how effectively its graduate programs establish
a knowledge base on which students develop depth of expertise.
The organization demonstrates the linkages between curricular and co-curricular
activities that support inquiry, practice, creativity, and social responsibility.
Learning outcomes demonstrate that graduates have achieved breadth of knowledge
and skills and the capacity to exercise intellectual inquiry.
Learning outcomes demonstrate effective preparation for continued learning.
Core Component 4c: The organization assesses the usefulness of its
curricula to students who will live and work in a global, diverse, and technological
society.
Examples of Evidence
Regular academic program reviews include attention to currency and relevance
of courses and programs.
In keeping with its mission, learning goals and outcomes include skills
and professional competence essential to a diverse workforce.
Learning outcomes document that graduates have gained the skills and knowledge
they need to function in diverse local, national, and global societies.
Curricular evaluation involves alumni, employers, and other external constituents
who understand the relationships among the courses of study, the currency
of the curriculum, and the utility of the knowledge and skills gained.
The organization supports creation and use of scholarship by students in
keeping with its mission.
Faculty expect students to master the knowledge and skills necessary for
independent learning in programs of applied practice.
The organization provides curricular and co-curricular opportunities that
promote social responsibility.
Core Component 4d: The organization provides support to ensure that
faculty, students, and staff acquire, discover, and apply knowledge responsibly.
Examples of Evidence
The organization's academic and student support programs contribute
to the development of student skills and attitudes fundamental to responsible
use of knowledge.
The organization follows explicit policies and procedures to ensure ethical
conduct in its research and instructional activities.
The organization encourages curricular and co-curricular activities that
relate responsible use of knowledge to practicing social responsibility.
The organization provides effective oversight and support services to ensure
the integrity of research and practice conducted by its faculty and students.
The organization creates, disseminates, and enforces clear policies on
practices involving intellectual property rights.
As called for by its mission, the organization identifies its constituencies and
serves them in ways both value.
Core Component 5a: The organization learns from the constituencies
it serves and analyzes its capacity to serve their needs and expectations.
Examples of Evidence
The organization's commitments are shaped by its mission and its
capacity to support those commitments.
The organization practices periodic environmental scanning to understand
the changing needs of its constituencies and their communities.
The organization demonstrates attention to the diversity of the constituencies
it serves.
The organization's outreach programs respond to identified community
needs.
In responding to external constituencies, the organization is well-served
by programs such as continuing education, outreach, customized training, and
extension services.
Core Component 5b: The organization has the capacity and the commitment
to engage with its identified constituencies and communities.
Examples of Evidence
The organization's structures and processes enable effective connections
with its communities.
The organization's co-curricular activities engage students, staff,
administrators, and faculty with external communities.
The organization's educational programs connect students with external
communities.
The organization's resources-physical, financial, and human-support
effective programs of engagement and service.
Planning processes project ongoing engagement and service.
Core Component 5c: The organization demonstrates its responsiveness
to those constituencies that depend on it for service.
Examples of Evidence
Collaborative ventures exist with other higher learning organizations and
education sectors (e.g., K-12 partnerships, articulation arrangements, 2+2
programs).
The organization's transfer policies and practices create an environment
supportive of the mobility of learners.
Community leaders testify to the usefulness of the organization's
programs of engagement.
The organization's programs of engagement give evidence of building
effective bridges among diverse communities.
The organization participates in partnerships focused on shared educational,
economic, and social goals.
The organization's partnerships and contractual arrangements uphold
the organization's integrity.
Core Component 5d: Internal and external constituencies value the
services the organization provides.
Examples of Evidence
The organization's evaluation of services involves the constituencies
served.
Service programs and student, faculty, and staff volunteer activities are
well received by the communities served.
The organization's economic and workforce development activities
are sought after and valued by civic and business leaders.
External constituents participate in the organization's activities
and co-curricular programs open to the public.
The organization's facilities are available to and used by the community.
The organization provides programs to meet the continuing education needs
of licensed professionals in its community.
