Process for Externally Accredited Programs

Background

The Graduate School recognizes the critical importance of satisfying your external accreditation process(es) as well as the tremendous amount of work that is required to do so. However, Michigan State University’s accreditation with the Higher Learning Commission requires that every program, even those externally accredited, undertake our internal accreditation process. Thus, we cannot simply accept your external accreditation report in place of completing our Strategic Program Assessment (SPA) process.

At the same time, the Graduate School recognizes that your external accreditation reports will often cover similar topics as those covered in the SPA self-study questions. It is our goal to allow you to reuse or adapt sections of your external accreditation reports to answer our self-study questions wherever possible to minimize duplication of effort.

Modified Process¹

Our modified process for determining where text from your external accreditation report can be reused/adapted is the following.

1. The Graduate Program Director (GPD) for the accredited program will compare the external accreditation report and questions asked by the external accrediting body and the SPA self-study questions. Based on this comparison, the GPD and will submit a proposal categorizing the self-study questions into the following three categories:
   1. Questions where content from the external accreditation report can be used/adapted to fully answer the question along with the proposed content.
   2. Questions where text from the external accreditation report can be used/adapted to partially answer the question along with the proposed content and a description of what additional information needs to be added.
   3. Questions where new responses are needed. This proposal should be made by the end of September.
2. The Graduate School will review the proposal and work with the GPD to finalize an agreement by the end of October.
3. Alternatively, programs may complete this process of proposing an adaptation to the SPA prior to their SPA year.
    

The first proposal categorizing the self-study questions will require some work. However, assuming the structure of your external accreditation report does not change significantly over time, in future years, we can proceed with the previous agreement as a starting point with just a quick review to verify the external accreditation report and the self-study questions have not changed significantly.

Note that while we allow programs to reuse sections from their external accreditation report to answer some of our self-study questions, we do require all programs to complete the SPA checklist items.

Finally, refer to this spreadsheet to see when your program is currently scheduled to undertake SPA. These timings were hopefully set taking your external accreditation timing into account. However, these timings can be adjusted to better align with your external accreditation process.

¹ Accredited undergraduate programs are undertaking a similar process where they must translate their external accreditation report responses to answer the Undergraduate Academic Program Review questions.

Potential match of Self-Study Question (SSQ) sections with External Accreditation Report (EAR) responses

Section 1: Program Context

• This optional section helps put your program into context, but no response is required.
• There likely are portions of your EAR that could be reused here.

Section 2: Student Population Goals and Processes

• Components that likely can be pulled from your EAR:
  • Any data reported in your EAR as the data for this section.
  • Any plans, processes, priorities you included in your EAR
• Components that may need to be added to complete this section:
  • Goals
  • Identification of gaps between current state and goals and places where the current state matches your goals
  • Priorities looking forward to either address gaps or leverage opportunities

Section 3: Student learning outcomes

• Components that likely can be pulled from your EAR:
  • Learning outcomes
  • Assessment methods
  • Any changes/revisions
• Components that may need to be added to complete this section:
  • Priorities for changes looking forward

Section 4: Student learning outcomes review

• Components that likely can be pulled from your EAR:
  • Description of your CQI process from your EAR.
• Components that may need to be added to complete this section:
  • Your CQI process if you did not have this in your EAR.

Section 5: Support for holistic student success

• We would like all programs to answer these questions. Feel free to pull in appropriate responses verbatim from your EAR.

Section 6: Additional Information

• This is an optional section.

Section 7: Looking forward

• We would like all programs to answer these questions.
• Ideally, these flow from answering the questions in the previous sections.
• These might be pulled from your EAR if it included a similar component.