Making the Case to Middle States
	While much hard work has already gone into ensuring Ithaca College's reaccreditation, dozens of faculty, staff, administrators, and students are putting in yet more hours this week as a team of evaluators examines how Ithaca College stacks up against its own self-appraisal. In a process that takes place every 10 years, the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools is considering whether Ithaca College continues to meet its standards for accreditation. A team comprising representatives from academic institutions similar to Ithaca is conducting its evaluation on Monday and Tuesday, November 10 and 11. A written report on the team's findings will be delivered in December, after which the College will have an opportunity to respond-addressing areas of the report with which it agrees or disagrees-and the Commission on Higher Education will act sometime in the spring to determine Ithaca College's continuing accreditation status. Acting provost Mary Lee Seibert, who cochairs the Middle States Institutional Self-Study Steering Committee, says the visitors have had a chance to examine the College's comprehensive self-study report, put together over the past 18 months. "We have given them a snapshot of the College-a picture of where the institution is at this particular point in time-and they will share back what they think of us. They will be measuring the College primarily against the standards we have set for ourselves in the self-study." Seibert acknowledges that there is always a bit of anxiety when so much is riding on the outcome of such a visit, but says that's no reason to worry. "Not everything at the College is as perfect as we would like it to be, but we have a strong institution that can withstand close scrutiny. I look at this as an opportunity for the College to find out more about its strengths as well as its weaknesses. We can gain a lot of insight by finding out what people who come from similar institutions think of us." During the course of its stay the team will meet with individuals and groups from a broad spectrum of the Ithaca College community, many of whom participated in one or more of the work groups that helped the steering committee put together the 199-page (with 70 pages of appendices) self-study document. The groups represented nine broad subject areas identified by the committee as areas for review and analysis specified in the Middle States Association's standards for accreditation. In their forward to the report, Seibert and committee cochair Laura Niesen de Abruna, associate professor of English, noted that it not only documents Ithaca College's continual self-evaluation, but also provides a comprehensive status report for new president Peggy R. Williams. "At the College, our ongoing planning processes are multidimensional and involve participation from all constituencies of the College community," they wrote. "Since the last Middle States self-study 10 years ago, the College has experienced significant enrollment changes accompanied by pressures to grow and then to reverse that growth to bring expenditures in line with revenues. Careful financial stewardship and the prudent use of resources enabled the College to improve the quality and range of programs, attract a student body of increasing quality and diversity, maintain an excellent faculty with continually improving academic and professional credentials, and improve the extended campus with new and renovated facilities." Though it will be several weeks until the evaluation team submits its formal report to the College, the campus won't have to wait that long to get some idea of what the group thought of its short but exhaustive visit. At 12:10 p.m. on Wednesday, November 12, the College community is invited to the Emerson Suites to hear an oral summary of the evaluators' findings by the team chair. And though the final results of the reaccreditation effort won't be known until the spring, Seibert says there's no reason to wait to celebrate the completion of this part of the process. Faculty, staff, administrators, and students are invited back to the Emerson Suites for a 4:00 p.m. party on Wednesday, so the steering committee can thank the campus community for all of the hard work that was put into the development of the Middle States self-study and the conduct of the evaluation visit.