University prepares for reaccreditation with self-inspection report

Faculty, administrators and students across all nine schools of the University are currently engaged in what has been a two-year long project of self-study. This undertaking is in preparation for the University’s upcoming reaccreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, a process that occurs once every 10 years.

The process of reaccreditation is important as it both evaluates the quality of a Hopkins education and determines whether students of the University are able to obtain federally funded student loans.

“Accreditation provides vital certification that the programs we run are rigorous and effective, and that the wider world can have confidence in the quality of the degrees we issue,” Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Katherine Newman wrote in an email to the University. “As one tangible example of the importance of that confidence, only accredited institutions are eligible to access the federal funds that support student loan programs.”

According to President Ronald J. Daniels, reaccreditation is not only significant in its reaffirmation of the University’s legitimacy as an educational institution, but it also gives Hopkins an opportunity to improve itself.

“The reaccreditation and self-study process provide an important opportunity for us to consider how we could make Johns Hopkins even stronger. . .It’s a lot of work, but it’s in our own best interest to seize this opportunity,” President Daniels wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

The decision as to whether or not Hopkins will receive reaccreditation is ultimately at the discretion of an evaluation team chaired by Thomas Rosenbaum, current provost of the University of Chicago. The team will conduct an on-campus assessment of Hopkins in May of 2014, the basis of which will be the self-study that is currently being redrafted.

Because the self-study plays such a central role in the reaccreditation of the University, its production has combined the efforts of every school at Hopkins. Each of the University’s nine schools drafted its own individual self-study, which was then combined by the University-wide Self-Study Steering Committee to create an overarching final report.

Dean Newman recently released an initial draft of the self-study conducted by the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences in an email to the University community. The report follows a standard template released by the Provost’s office, and addresses all 14 of the accreditation standards required, including those regarding institutional resources, leadership and governance, university integrity, student retention, faculty and educational offerings.

According to Professor Matthew Roller, who played a significant role in the drafting of the Krieger School’s self-study report, the production of this document was no small task.

“It requires the collecting of an enormous amount of material, of documents and evidence for everything from the financial parts of the University to plans for the building of new facilities. . .Just trying to find out which person has what information is exhausting in itself,” Roller said. “The survey asks about every aspect of the University’s operations, sometimes about things that I didn’t even know existed.”

The Self-Study Steering Committee, which was charged with the task of weaving together all of the individual reports, consists of a mixture of faculty, undergraduate and graduate students and administrators. According to Jonathan Bagger, vice provost and chair of the Steering Committee, members of the committee were selected by the Provost’s office in an attempt to get as broad a range of perspectives as possible.

“Members of the Steering Committee were chosen for different reasons. . .for instance we have a student from the medical school, a student from SAIS, we have the vice deans, someone from the Ph.D. board. . .They were basically chosen to cover across the university. We tried to be broad and inclusive,” Bagger said.

In addition to addressing the fourteen accreditation-standards required in its self-study, the University has chosen to pay special attention to two particular areas of education: Ph.D. education and the teaching of introductory science courses.

“10 years ago the accreditation focused on undergraduate education, so now seemed like a very natural time to focus on Ph.D. education. Plus, Ph.D. education nationwide is going through a period of great change. . .people are doing all sorts of things now with their degrees and so it’s an opportunity to see what we’re doing at Johns Hopkins in the context of the national scale,” Bagger said. “As for introductory science courses, there’s also been a lot of ferment in education there about new teaching techniques and what’s the best way to learn, using methods like hands-on activities and new technologies. Again, it’s a good way to look across the entire university and focus in on what we can improve on.”

Now that the initial draft of the overarching self-study has been completed, the Steering Committee is looking to the Hopkins community to provide feedback on the report. The report is available online, as recently distributed via email by President Daniels and Provost Lieberman to the community and comments are welcome at selfstudy@jhu.edu.

Additionally, town hall meetings are being held across the University’s various campuses as a forum for discussion centered on the self-study report. The Homewood campus town hall meeting was held this past Tuesday in Mason Hall, with a turnout that was almost entirely administration and faculty members.

The Steering Committee has not received much student feedback yet, either in the town hall meeting held on Tuesday or through the email account that was set up. This poses a problem for the Steering Committee; according to the vice chair of the Committee, Philip Tang, comments from the community are vital.

“Feedback from the university is critical. The self-study process is designed to be an inclusive process, allowing us to hear from any member of the university community. We welcome hearing from anyone,” Tang wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

Though it is not likely that the Middle States Commission on Higher Education will deny Hopkins reaccreditation, it is more probable that the evaluation team will identify problem areas within the self-study that they will then ask the University to re-examine.

“I think it’s extremely unlikely that the university will be turned down for reaccreditation, but what I do think could happen is that they pick bones and find areas where they send us back and make us do our homework again,” Roller said.

Tang found that his view of Hopkins changed after he became involved in the self-study.

“The committee was prepared to struggle with discussing how such a decentralized university functions effectively as one coherent institution,” Tang wrote. “Many of us were surprised to realize how integrated we really are in many ways. Clearly, we’re still very decentralized, but I think the report may surprise you in detailing how well we coordinate many functions across the university.”

“Not surprising: The process reaffirmed that we are a community of individuals who are extraordinarily committed to and care deeply about our University.”