Philosophy of Reaccreditation?

Or perhaps just an approach to it? My handy Microsoft dictionary tells me that a philosophy might be a set of "guiding or underlying principles" or simply "calm resignation." By way of introducing this blog and myself as the self-study coordinator for the accreditation process, I thought I would write a little bit about my own approach to institutional evaluation (which is what this process is all about).

It strikes me that there are two ways of approaching the task of reaccreditation. One is, in fact, calm resignation. Reaccreditation is something that we have to do, a hoop we have to jump through. To keep Kenyon's accreditation with the North Central Association we must go through a self--study process and a site visit, so let's do it and get it over with, with a minimum of fuss and bother. A reasonable approach, but perhaps a bit shortsighted in the long run, given the amount of time and effort we must invest in the process (2 years of it).

Alternatively, we might stop and ask, what's in it for us? Is there anything tangible that we can get from the process? This is always the question I like to ask about institutional evaluation. As a department chair, when my program is up for external review, I want to ask what can we as a program or department get out of this review? A major? A new position? New courses? Some fresh ideas? I don't see why reaccreditation should be any different. As an institution all of us need to be asking "what's in it for us," what might we get out of reaccreditation?

Throughout this process I plan to return to the Kenyon community again and again to ask you what you want from reaccreditation. What questions should we be asking about ourselves? We will be compiling those responses and using them to shape the information that we are collecting for the reaccreditation self--study.

Watch this space for further information about reaccreditation. I will try to post a blog roughly every week to keep the entire campus informed about our process. I would also like to use this blog as a way to invite dialogue about the process and, once we have begun writing, your feedback on the drafts that we produce. I want this process to be as transparent as possible so that everyone on campus knows what we are doing and is able to have a voice in it. Please feel free to comment below.