General Information

President Williams Appoints Middle States Steering Committee – Work Well Underway

Ithaca College is currently engaged in a comprehensive self-study as part of the process for reaccreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. In its own words, the Commission on Higher Education is the “unit of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools that accredits degree-granting colleges and universities in the Middle States region, which includes Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and several locations abroad.” Middle States is “a recognized leader in promoting and ensuring quality assurance and improvement in higher education.” (More information is available at www.msche.org the official website of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.)

President Williams has appointed a Steering Committee composed of faculty, staff and students, with Marian MacCurdy, Professor of Writing in the School of Humanities and Sciences and William Pelto, Associate Dean of the School of Music as co-chairs. The group began its work this past spring with the development of a series of self-study questions based on a set of 14 standards developed by Middle States as a guide for colleges and universities to use in self-examination of their progress and processes.

A reaccreditation self-study design statement was then developed and submitted to Middle States on June 1 for final approval. The study includes the research questions developed by the steering committee that will be used to examine the College’s effectiveness in meeting the intention of the standards and whose answers will lead to a report to be submitted to Middle States prior to a visit in spring 2008 by a survey team composed of colleagues from peer institutions.

Six task forces composed of faculty, staff and students have been created to carry out the self-study over the fall of 2006. This group met for the first time on Tuesday, September 12, 2006 to begin their important charge. They will use the questions created by the steering committee to guide their work. According to Middle States, the research questions “are the heart of the self-study design and a central driving force in the self-study process. They provide structure for the working groups’ research, analysis, and reporting. The process of creating the questions helps to focus the institution on the areas of inquiry that are most useful to the College.”

The information gathered by the task forces will be coalesced into a report written by the steering committee and co-chairs Marian MacCurdy and Bill Pelto for submission to the Middle States team prior to an onsite campus visit anticipated for spring 2008.