Town Hall Meeting Ushers in Final Phase of Re-Accreditation Process

BC Provost William A. Tramontano and R. Barbara Gitenstein, chair of the Middle States visiting team

As Brooklyn College heads into the final phase of the Middle States re-accreditation process, the College hosted a packed town hall meeting in the Student Center to explain what’s ahead and to answer questions.

R. Barbara Gitenstein, president of The College of New Jersey and the head of an eight-member Middle States visiting team that will evaluate the College this spring, explained that her job will be to determine whether Brooklyn College is meeting Middle States’ fourteen standards of excellence.

The College has completed a working draft of a self study, part of the multi-pronged process that will culminate with a finding from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, a non-profit, non-governmental organization that accredits colleges and universities in the mid-Atlantic region.

Gitenstein stressed that the commission is not looking for perfection. Still, it’s important for the College to take a long, hard look at itself. "What is a failure is if you are not honest with yourself or you don’t try to remedy your problems," she explained. "Higher education is by definition an aspirational industry. We believe in continuous improvement."

The College has to renew its accreditation every ten years. The entire process takes about three years and started with the appointment of a steering committee comprised of twenty-eight students, staff, and faculty members, co-chaired by Professors Lynda Day and Bonnie Gustav. Working groups have researched and prepared different parts of the self study, a draft of which is posted online. The groups looked at all aspects of the College, including the budget, academic resources, faculty credentials, and governance. Gitenstein said that perhaps the two most important things the evaluation team will look at are standards that correspond to the areas of institutional effectiveness and learning outcomes.

Gitenstein’s team, which will be comprised of other college officials from New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, will prepare a report and share their findings with a Middle States committee, which will then go on to make recommendations to the full commission. The commission will make a final decision between June and November 2009. At that time, they either will issue a warning that the College needs to improve in certain areas or, more likely, renew the College’s accreditation. Without accreditation, students would not be eligible for federal financial aid, though it is rare for a college to lose the standing because accreditors often give an institution time to remedy any problems.
 
"You all have been very honest with yourselves in your self study," Gitenstein said, "and that’s usually when this process works best."

Members of the Brooklyn College community who would like to comment on the self study or arrange to meet with the evaluation team when they visit from March 29 to April 1 can do so by sending an e-mail to provostoffice@brooklyn.cuny.edu.

The College will host two more town halls this semester to get feedback on the self study draft: one for students on November 20 and one for faculty and staff members on December 2.