The University of Idaho Faculty Senate passed a proposal Tuesday implementing a new University Assessment and Accreditation Committee to review the university’s academic institutions.
Accreditation functions as a means of quality control, ensuring academic and co-curricular standards are met and in compliance with regional standards. To ensure these standards, a new committee was formed to create greater unification.
The new committee will replace the previous committees tasked with addressing accreditation for the various colleges. Those committees were intended to be temporary.
A variety of ad hoc committees have existed to address issues of accreditation, but their long-standing existence has defeated their initial purpose, Faculty Senate Vice Chair Russell Meeuf said.
To fix this issue, the Committee on Committees proposed the implementation of a unified committee that will absorb some of the present ad hoc committees and function as “an advisory committee on issues of assessment and accreditation.”
According to the Committee on Committees’ policy, the new accreditation committee will be comprised of 11 voting faculty members. One member will represent each academic college along with an additional member representing the library. Members will be tasked with implementing university and department-level assessment initiatives to evaluate programs in a manner more in tune with the needs of individual departments and their students.
This committee will work to foster better communication between the university’s Institutional Assessment and Accreditation program and faculty members across departments.
The committee will also maintain engagement with the current independent accreditor, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, to ensure the integrity of educational programs at UI can continue to be reviewed by an independent authority.
The proposal for a shift to a unified University Assessment and Accreditation Committee becomes effective July 1.
Royce McCandless can be reached at [email protected] or Twitter @roycemccandless