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The university will submit a report in September to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools for its accreditation.

A committee composed of members from other institutions visited the UTB/TSC campus April 7 to 9 to evaluate the university

“There are teams of individuals, faculty and staff from other institution who serve on these teams and so we spent about a year and a half preparing our responses to the SACS criteria, which are expectations that the organization has for all of the colleges that are part of SACS,” said Charles Dameron, vice president for Academic Affairs.

The SACS commission provides the principles for accreditation for schools in the Southeast every 10 years.

“You have to prove with your documentation that you have met the principles,” said Anne Hamilton, associate dean of the library at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Ga., and a member of the SACS Formation committee.

Dameron said the university submitted a full report in September 2007.

“We then got some feedback on that report from one SACS team in November,” he said. “We then submitted a response to the questions that they had for clarifying or providing more information. We provided that in February and then in April we had a second SACS team … and spent three days doing their assessment.”

Dameron said the SACS committee provided a verbal report April 9.

“They complimented the university for many of the things that we’re doing that they think are noteworthy,” he said. “They were very impressed with the students. They said that it’s clear that we have a mission that the faculty and the staff are dedicated to and it shows the work that we’re doing here on behalf of the education of South Texas.”

According to an open letter from UTB/TSC President Juliet V. García dated April 9, the committee recommended that:

--the new established Quality Enhancement Program be restructured and updated “to reflect broader involvement by the campus community to refine the assessment methodology and to identify plants to scale up the initiative.”

--the university provide evidence of assessment and analysis for student learning outcomes, administrative support services and educational support services.

“Specifically, they’re saying: ‘Take a look at your processes in the educational programs and make sure you’re going through that circular progress. … Take a look at your administrative support services,’ that’s the second area, and the third area is what they’re calling educational support services,” Dameron said.

He said committees are being formed to focus on each task, and they will do some more research.

According to García’s letter, the SACS committee also made five other recommendations:

-- document the new process for tracking and evaluating consortial and contractual agreements;

--provide evidence in publications that the policy for accepting life experience for credit is updated and published;

--complete assessment for general education competencies;

--submit a substantive change request for the establishment of the International Technology, Education and Commerce campus; and

--publish procedures for documenting the resolution of written student complaints.

 “We always learn something when we do one of these visits that we can take back to our own campuses,” Hamilton told The Collegian while she was on the way to the Arnulfo L. Oliveira Memorial Library to talk to Douglas Ferrier, dean of instructional support, about library services.

Asked what she learned this time, Hamilton replied, “This is very different for most of us because most of us are not from open enrollment institutions. So, one of the things that I’ve enjoyed is seeing the diversity among students and faculty. We try for that but we’re not there.”

Dameron said that in the last 30 years the university has received four visits from SACS.

“It’s a very constructive process; it’s helpful for institutions to take the time to look at themselves closely, and then have some, basically, colleagues from other institutions come in and help us look at the way we do things,” he said. “So, it’s all intended for the benefit of the mission of the institution.”