Accreditation team to visit WSU campuses next week

PULLMAN – An accreditation team from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities will visit WSU’s campuses next week, the final step in the 10-year reaccreditation process for the university.

The 12-person team, which is led by Auburn University President Jay Gogue (GOODGE’), will be on the Pullman campus April 1-3. Team members will also visit the Tri-Cities and Vancouver campuses on March 30 and the Spokane campus April 2. They will be evaluating how well the university is addressing nine standards for institutional improvement and effectiveness established by the NWCCU.

“Re-accreditation is one of the most important indicators of the quality of a university,” said Larry James, associate executive vice president and chair of the accreditation steering committee. “The accreditation team’s visit is an opportunity to showcase our strengths as an institution and show how we are meeting the challenges we face.”

The accreditation team will be meeting with people from across the university to help determine how well WSU is meeting the goals laid out in its self-study, which was submitted to the WSU Board of Regents at its January meeting and then sent on to the NWCCU.

The self-study is the product of a two-year process to assess WSU’s effectiveness in undergraduate, graduate and professional education, research and service. About 200 people worked on the self-study, which is available at the accreditation Web site at http://accreditation.wsu.edu/ .

Members of the university community are invited to attend an open meeting with the accreditation team to comment about WSU’s qualifications for re-accreditation and its self-study from 11 a.m. to noon Thursday, April 2, in Room 518 of the Smith Center for Undergraduate Education on the Pullman campus.

WSU was last accredited by NWCCU in 1999. That status was reaffirmed by the commission based on an interim report in 2004. Accreditation through the NWCCU is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and it has an impact on an institution’s eligibility for federal funds and student aid.

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