Re: Another reason for needing accreditation

[hawthorn@badlands.nodak.edu (Joan Hawthorne)]

Kevin -

I'm not Joan Mullin, and I can't speak for her in answer to the questions
you've raised.  But I disagree totally with your premise that what we do to
and for ourselves is essentially meaningless to the larger world.
Accreditation doesn't have to be the stamp of approval that measures exactly
how good we are.  If nothing else, it has value as a form of self-study, and
as a basis for comparing writing center operations across institutions.  A
lot of the conversation on list servs like this is requests for comparative
data, because administrators always want to know "what are other
institutions doing about comp/wac/writing centers?"

And think about the success of the WPA consultant/evaluator program.
Institutions across the country routinely cough up maybe $5000 per visit,
once fees plus travel costs are figured in, to bring in a team of WPA
consultant/evaluators.  Add in the costs for everybody's time to meet with
the evaluation team.  Yet, WPAs often report that the team's visit was the
best thing that ever happened to their writing program, because
administrators and colleagues alike accepted the team's report as meaningful
(even though the local WPA sometimes said the same things to a much chillier
reception).

Administrators here do tend to listen to experts from other universities,
and I'd expect accreditors would be no exception.  Perhaps that's not the
case in your own institution.  So maybe the potential value of NWCA
accreditation would depend on the culture/atmosphere of the institution??

Joan Hawthorne
Univ. of North Dakota