accreditation/assessment

[adeciccio@merrimack.edu]

First of all, let me take Dennis of the hook here a little bit because it 
was at our MUD *meeting* that some of us asked him to bring this topic to 
the wcenter list so that the NWCA Board might better focus its discussions 
of the issue in Chicago.

Second, I agree with most of what Jeanne says:  we have to face the fact of 
academic life that assessment is here to stay, . Who does the assessing 
should be our concern?  How we do it should be our concern? 
 
Jeanne makes good sense in a lot of what she says, but we still need 
clarification about some issues:  Exactly how does wcenter accreditation/
assessment differ from that of, say, an Education or Engineering or 
Accounting Department?  Who pays for training, travel, consultation?  
Who selects?  Exactly how will the process for assessment/accreditation be 
defined for small colleges, large universities, two-year colleges, 
secondary schools, etc.?

It is certainly to our advantage to have a team of wcenter workers 
assessing writing centers.  They should  affirm and lend credibility to 
the practices taking place in writing centers.  This will help to discredit 
impressionistic judgments by non-writing center people.  That's a very good 
outcome of an accreditation/assessment process.  

I have learned from NEASC/CIHE assessment coordinators, like Peggy Maki and 
Barbara Wright, that assessment these days is intended to be much more 
lenient with programs than perhaps has been the case in the past.  In other 
words, to make administrators happy, assessors can set time limits.  But to 
be fair to constituents and their programs, these limits are fairly 
generous (3-5 years) and specific guidelines are set out to be followed 
with prescriptions for resources that need to be allocated.  Now, this 
interpretation may be more humane than either Peggy or Barbara intended, 
but the point they made, again and again, to AVP's, Presidents, Deans, 
Faculty, Directors, Coordinators, etc., is that no one should be *harmed* 
in the initial phases of an assessment process and resources should be 
provided to make improvements, if necessary.

Anyway, I voluntered to try to track down some of our colleagues in WPA to 
find out from that group what they did exactly with their accreditation/
assessment effort.  Perhaps the model they used might be something we can 
adapt.

Looking forward to hearing many voices,

Al DeCiccio