Early this year the School of Business met or exceeded each of the standards for accreditation from AACSB International-the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. As a result, and in keeping with our five-year accreditation schedule, the school can receive accreditation next year -- after a formal assessment plan is put into place. This good news comes from a peer review team that conducted the business school review in February.

During the last five years, the School of Business has devoted much time and effort to implementing a plan to achieve accreditation by AACSB International. The plan outlines a series of objectives to be met and a timeline for meeting them. The AACSB International candidacy committee reviewed and approved the plan in September 2000, and thereafter the business school began the accreditation process. The school submitted a self-evaluation report to AACSB International in August 2003 and was then visited by an AACSB International committee. Now, the last step is to formalize and implement an assessment plan.

The accreditation process has changed dramatically since the early 1990s, when the school made an unsuccessful bid for accreditation. In the early 1990s, the school was reviewed under a "one size fits all" policy that essentially required Ithaca College to meet the same standards used to evaluate major research universities (e.g., MIT and the University of Chicago). Yet many schools of business, such as those in comprehensive colleges, do not pursue research as their primary mission but achieve excellence in other ways.

Recognizing this, AACSB International abandoned its traditional approach in favor of mission-based standards. Accordingly, the standards against which a school is judged during the accreditation review process are those that are appropriate to the school's stated mission. A second, equally fundamental change in the accreditation process is AACSB International's adoption of the requirement that all schools, regardless of mission, demonstrate continuous quality improvement -- hence the need for an assessment plan.

The IC mission statement gives highest priority to the education of undergraduate and M.B.A. students for careers in business administration and accounting. Research and other scholarly activities are a close second in terms of priority and are undertaken primarily to inform our educational programs. What makes our programs distinctive, however, is the extent to which we are able to provide students with venues in which to practice the things they have learned in the classroom and to develop their managerial and professional skills in the process. Developing students' performance skills is the hallmark of an Ithaca College education.

In 2003 the business school faculty formed a standing committee to design and implement a formal assessment process. Four faculty members have attended AACSB International's assessment seminars, and two will be employed over the summer to work out the details of a final plan. School faculty members will vote on the plan in August 2004 and spend the fall semester implementing the plan and using preliminary assessment data to improve the school's programs. The plan and initial assessment data will be submitted to AACSB International in January 2005. Another peer review team will visit the school in March and, with everything in order, accreditation should be announced at the organization's annual meeting in April.

Among the estimated 1,200 to 1,700 collegiate business schools in the United States, AACSB International has accredited just 418 of them -- plus another 62 outside the United States.