Every ten years, many institutions of higher education, RPI included, partake in the Middle States Commission on Higher Education accreditation process. Accreditation is obtained via a self-study report conducted by the institution followed by a peer review from a team of evaluators chosen from member universities.
RPI’s current evaluation cycle began in November 2003 and has directly involved around 100 people from areas across the Institute. RPI’s final self-study report is based on subsidiary reports and findings in the 14 “areas of excellence” identified by the commission. Of these areas, seven of them deal with institutional processes and seven of them deal with academics. The areas include institutional goals, resources, leadership, administration, admissions, services, faculty, course offerings, and assessment of student learning. Students were represented by Hannah Kim ’07 in the area of student support services and Matthew Ezovski ’06 in the area of general education.
In previous assessments, RPI and other institutions needed only to provide their assessments and thoughts on their processes. Under new standards instituted by Middle States, however, schools will now have to provide evidence and data for their evaluations and recommendations. In RPI’s case, this evidence takes the form of nearly a dozen boxes containing binders of facts and figures to back up the self-study. The chairman of the Self-Study Steering Committee, Professor of Nuclear Engineering Don Steiner, indicated that the new standards warranted “less description and more assessment.”
As of this month, Dr. Steiner considers the report 98 percent done. Earlier this month, Provost G.P. “Bud” Peterson released a draft version of the report that can be accessed at https://www.rpi.edu/AFS/dept/provost/msacRPI/selfstudy/. The final draft of the self-study is due to the evaluation team, led by Dr. Jared Cohon of Carnegie Mellon University, by February. The evaluation team will visit RPI from April 2-5, 2006, in order to form its recommendations and observations based upon the self-study. As part of their visit, they will meet with department heads, deans, the provost, the president, and conceivably the faculty and student senates, both of which were interviewed as part of the self-study.
In particular, Steiner noted that “The Rensselaer Plan came out having high marks in terms of the seven Middle States areas related to the aspects of Institutional operations.” Of the various parts of the Plan, the performance planning process is regarded as especially key to the school’s success. Each department, or portfolio as RPI calls them, carries out this planning process to gauge its goals and effectiveness in implementing particular aspects of the Plan.
One area of RPI’s academic operations noted in particular was the area of student learning assessment. Currently, the report on student learning assessment notes an uneven application of standards, indicating that the schools of architecture, engineering, and management have the most mature learning assessments (in part due to the separate accreditations the schools of Architecture and Engineering must pursue) while the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the School of Science have not completely formalized or established assessment processes, primarily because no formalized standards or accreditations have been used in the past.
The assessment process, thorough as its many steps may be, does not end with the visit of the evaluation team. Following their visit, they will issue a set of concerns and recommendations. RPI will then respond to those concerns along with steps to correct them. Steiner indicated that in the past, implementation of the recommendations had not always been a part of the accreditation process and that implementation has at times been informal or uneven. With the new accreditation process, however, the concerns and recommendations raised will be reviewed five years after re-accreditation. The report issued at that time will also be subject to the standards for the self-study, which will involve data and evaluations of the implementation of the recommendations presented to RPI.
