The Middle States Steering Committee is pleased to share an important milestone in Ithaca College’s reaccreditation process: the final draft of the College’s self-study report has been completed and submitted to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE). With this major step behind us, our focus now turns to the next phase—preparing for our MSCHE mock site visit February 23-24 and the evaluation team’s official site visit on March 29-April 1. Broad participation from across our campus community will be essential during this stage, and we look forward to engaging with many of you as we move ahead together.
The final self-study report represents over three years of collaboration by more than 60 faculty, staff, and students. Working across seven committees and reviewing more than 900 pieces of evidence, these contributors have developed a seven-chapter document that reflects on our institution’s progress as measured through the MSCHE standards on mission and goals; ethics and integrity; design and delivery of the student learning experience; support of the student experience; effectiveness assessment; planning and resources; and governance/leadership/administration.
We encourage all campus community members to engage with the self-study report— the more voices informed by it, the better. If you’re short on time, start with the introduction and conclusion for a clear, high-level overview. The introduction includes brief summaries of each chapter, making it easy to identify sections most relevant to your area of expertise and decide where to dive deeper. For convenience, the table of contents is fully hyperlinked and the PDF is bookmarked, allowing you to navigate quickly and read what matters most to you.
With the self-study complete, our next priority is preparing for the upcoming mock and official site visits, when the evaluation team will engage directly with our campus community.
Community participation will be especially important during this phase, including engagement in open sessions with the evaluation team, which will be announced soon. To support campus-wide preparation, a Site Visit Guide has been developed to help the IC community better understand the reaccreditation process, the purpose of the site visit, and how to prepare. The guide outlines what to expect during the visit and offers practical guidance for those engaging directly with the evaluation team, helping our community feel informed, confident, and ready to showcase the meaningful work happening across campus.
We are deeply grateful to the entire IC community for the time, care, and commitment that have brought us to this point, and for the continued engagement that will carry us through the site visit phase. Your contributions—past, present, and future—are essential to this process, and we appreciate all you do to support and strengthen our institution.
Sincerely,
The Middle States Steering Committee Co-Chairs
Te-Wen Lo, Professor, School of H&S; Faculty Fellow, Office of Access, Opportunity, and Achievement
John Fracchia, Career Engagement and Technology Specialist, Center for Career Exploration and Development