Countdown toward Accreditation

The School of Business is putting the finishing touches on a self-evaluation report that will serve as the basis for a site visit by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), scheduled for next February. If all goes well, the school's accreditation will be announced at AACSB-International's April 2004 meeting.

AACSB is the premier accrediting agency for baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral programs in accounting and business administration and is the professional organization for management education. Thirty percent of the 1,294 institutions in the United States that offer degrees in business have achieved AACSB accreditation.

The accreditation process focuses on three main areas: mission, standards,
and continuous quality improvement. Business schools pursue a variety of
missions, depending on whether they are oriented primarily toward research or teaching, graduate or undergraduate
education, urban or residential student populations, and so on. Accordingly, accreditation review evaluates each school's performance in key areas --- selecting students, developing faculty, planning curricula, delivering instruction --- in the context of the school's mission. Performance in these functions must satisfy AACSB standards and be consistent with the school's unique mission. Finally, accreditation requires schools to demonstrate that they have established processes that produce continuous quality improvements in each of the key performance areas. In turn, this requires schools to develop multiple, objective measures of performance in each area and to implement changes that lead to demonstrable improvements.

Work toward achieving accreditation began in 1999, when the school entered the pre-candidacy phase of the process. The deans and faculty spent a year comparing the school's performance in each key performance area against accreditation standards and then planning strategies for closing the gaps between the two. The resulting accreditation plan was approved by AACSB the following year, and the school became a candidate for accreditation.

The next three years were spent creating quality improvement processes for each key performance area. These efforts resulted in several significant improvements in the school's program:

• Between 1998 and 2002 applications for the school's baccalaureate majors increased from 754 to 1,412.
• Total enrollment increased from 461 students to 647.
• First-year students' average total SAT scores went from 1094 to 1130.
• Minority student enrollment grew from 9.1 percent to 11 percent.
• The number of full-time, tenure-
  eligible faculty members grew from 19 to 27.
• Retention of first-year students improved from 77 percent to 86.6 percent.
• And the M.B.A. program was inaugurated.

However, the greatest benefit of the school's involvement in the accreditation process has been a change in the way faculty and staff members view their roles. "Being a candidate for accreditation has given us the chance to evaluate our programs and think about how to make them better," says Dean Robert Ullrich. "We are implementing changes based on our assessments, and it is heartening to see how willing the faculty are to embrace these new changes. We think our enhancements will lead to higher student retention and student involvement in extracurricular activities, as well as to faculty research productivity." And to accreditation next spring.