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BY DANTE FUOCO

In print | Published January 29, 2009

Though the college expects to receive reaccreditation, it continues to proceed through the exhaustive process of internal self-study and external review with great attentiveness. Rather than treating accreditation as a minor process, college officials see it as a means to improve the college’s future.

“It’s a lot of work, but I think it’s necessary. It shows we’re paying attention,” Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Jim Bock said. “It’s been a fruitful process … a great chance to sit back and look at what we’re doing, how we’re doing it and why we’re doing it.”

A college becomes accredited when an outside body, in this case the Middle States Commission, decides that it meets established educational standards. The process includes an internal self-study, which explains how the college fulfills the Middle States Commission’s Fourteen Standards of Excellence, and an external review, conducted by a team of evaluators from peer institutions. Accreditation, which happens every ten years, is intended to make institutions more self-regulated and less directly managed by governments, Vice President Maurice Eldridge ’61 said in an e-mail.

The visiting team will read the self-study and visit the campus at the end of March, issuing a report soon after on its findings and recommendations. When the visiting team comes to campus March 29 to April 1, members will likely meet with various committees, members of the faculty and staff and students.

“If the review finds areas in which they think we need to concentrate more … we will respond either with additional related evidence or with a plan to address that area more completely in the future,” Eldridge said.

The Middle States Commission will then decide this summer whether the college has met reaccreditation standards and will subsequently make a recommendation. College officials, though, are certain that the college will become reaccredited.

“I have no doubt [the visiting team will] come here and say this is a great place doing great things,” Professor of Economics Ellen Magenheim said.

If the college isn’t reaccredited, however, it can lose federal funding. This would then hinder some of its fundamental inner-workings, such as financial aid, Magenheim said. The college, as a result, would have to take the visiting team’s recommendations before it could be reaccredited.

Although she was not sure if the committee’s entire review would be made public for the college community over the summer, Magenheim said that she assumes “somehow we’ll communicate what the committee said.”

Even with the college expecting reaccreditation, the visiting team’s comments are nevertheless helpful to the administration.

“[Members of the visiting team] come from different schools with different ideas,” Magenheim said, mentioning former or current members from schools like Barnard, Wellesley and the American University in Paris. She added that the college not only anticipates the visiting team’s comments will be useful, but also hopes members of the planning groups can “try to distill what’s useful” from the report.

“I have no doubt everybody [at the college involved in planning for the future] will be informed from what we learn,” she said.

The reaccreditation process is happening on the heels of the college’s creation of eight planning groups in 2007. These groups, comprised of board members, faculty, staff, students, alumni and parents, intend to envision future improvements for the college.

Eldridge emphasized, however, that while the two processes — planning and the self-study — may at times be “mutually informing, the self-study stands alone even as it mentions the priorities that may ultimately emerge from the planning.” In 1999, however, there was a direct relationship between the then-planning groups and the self-study.

With the college’s presidential transition and the country’s economic turmoil, the college anticipates that certain plans for the future will, for now, be put on hold.

“[There is a] pause in the planning process to give the new president the opportunity to finalize the determination of priorities and to give time for the economy to recover,” Eldridge said.

According to Bock, “time will tell” what those plans may be and what will come of them. He maintained, however, that the presidential transition and the economic recession will not change the way the college currently runs.

“We’re absolutely committed to all our current policies,” Bock said. Making changes to the college is “more of a budget concern than an academic way,” he added.

The college sent out an e-mail earlier this month updating the community on the reaccreditation process and encouraging student and faculty to become involved in Swarthmore’s internal review by providing feedback on the 100-page self-study draft. Director of Institutional Research Robin Shores said that she has yet to receive any specific feedback from students, however. Just one student responded to the e-mail, and while he thanked the college for their message, he did not comment on the draft itself. Shores said that she “wasn’t really sure what to expect” and understands that students may be busy at the beginning of the semester.

According to Magenheim, the lack of student responses might not be due to apathy or busy schedules. She said that she hopes students, as members of planning groups, do not have problems with the draft and feel like “their voices were heard earlier in the planning process.”

While some faculty responded, Shores and Magenheim said that there was no common theme to the feedback or criticism.

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