Preparing for Accreditation: Building Systems for Readiness and Shared Ownership

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Accreditation, shared responsibility, ongoing process, compliance, timeline, continuous improvement, faculty reflection, data analysis, leadership turnover, institutional habits, audit readiness, strategic planning, program assessment, quality assurance, higher education.

SPEAKERS

Joi Patterson, Amy Vujaklija

Joi Patterson: 00:04

It can't be one person's job. It can't be this is my job security, if I keep it in my little drive over here, then no one knows what I'm doing, and they're dependent on me. It really has to be an institutional, shared responsibility.

Amy Vujaklija: 00:20

Teaching and leading are rewarding, but complex,

Joi Patterson: 00:24

and whether you're in a classroom or a campus, new challenges are always emerging.

Amy Vujaklija: 00:30

I'm Amy Vujaklija.

Joi Patterson: 00:32

I'm Joi Patterson, and this is teaching and leading, where we explore teaching leadership, equity and the systems that shape education

Amy Vujaklija: 00:43

and how educators can grow, explore and have a meaningful impact as teachers and leaders. So let's get into it. Hello. Dr Joi,

Joi Patterson: 00:58

hello. Dr Amy, good to see you again.

Amy Vujaklija: 01:01

I know we are back to talk about our favorite topic, accreditation, and we can talk along forever about why accreditation, why we shouldn't the purpose it serves. But let's think about it as a process. Yep, successful accreditation does not happen at the last minute, and so let's spend some time talking about successful accreditation that is not at the last minute.

Joi Patterson: 01:37

Yeah, because that's one of the biggest mistakes, right? That's one of the biggest mistakes that we do in preparing for accreditation. So hopefully our listeners, they listen to the first one, and we kind of talked about the why. So I'm assuming, if they're listening to number two, they've kind of made a decision at least halfway Yes, I'm going to pursue this and not be so afraid. I wish that I had this video you know that we were doing now when I learned that I was responsible for accreditation.

Amy Vujaklija: 02:13

So let me ask you that question. You started to allude to it. But what are the most common mistakes that institute

Joi Patterson: 02:20

would make one of the most common mistakes that institution make is treating accreditation like a last minute event or an assignment rather than an ongoing process. You know, if the preparation starts too late, you know what it's going to do. It's going to lead to rush documents. It's going to lead to stress, is going to lead to miss opportunity, is going to lead to meaningless task, is going to lead to disgruntled employees. Another thing that will happen is that you start to isolate people. So this is the one I really, really hate, is that because you don't have enough time, you decrease the number of people that are involved, because you don't have time for voices, you don't have time for reflections and thoughts, and what do you think? And you do section one and section two And section three, you don't have time for that. Just let me do it myself, right? Let me do it myself, and I can get it done. And so you don't have time for community. And so it doesn't, it just has the one voice, and then you live in these silos. And so then it becomes, then it does become very compliance driven. And it's not about the quality of the program, is not about the students, it's not about the outcomes, and you don't have time for clear communication and to really garner support. So I would say really the number one mistake is last minute, and if you do it last minute, it creates all of those other challenges. What do you think

Amy Vujaklija: 04:02

I'm hearing exactly what you're saying when you talk about how you have to shrink your leadership team? I've seen that where, okay, the report is due in July, and I've asked for stuff from faculty. Oh, but now it's June, and they're off contract. You know what's going on here. So when you think about the reflection that ongoing analysis of data, and who is doing the analysis and who is reflecting, if that is shrinking. Not everyone has a voice. Well, if someone doesn't have a voice, then why should they have any buy in?

Joi Patterson: 04:48

Yep, yep. You know, I think a timeline is one of your best friends in communicating. But even if you don't have a lot of time, you know, because sometimes it's give. Shifted to you, and you have to deal with the time that you have, right? And we can't use that as an excuse. So with the time that you have, if it's not within your control, I think a timeline can be your best friend, right? And then you put all of these things that you have to do by when, by WHO, and being able to communicate that and share it. So even if the timeline is short, I think sometimes taking the approach, especially at the beginning of it of all hands on deck. So at least everyone feels like they've been included. Because it doesn't fare well for the on site visit. If you worked in silos, it will show up. So what Amy, why do you think that people wait until the clock is ticking that you know you're almost out of time? What is that?

Amy Vujaklija: 05:55

I think that can happen for a number of reasons, sometimes whenever you think. All right, so our next accreditation site visit is 2032 so we are making plans in 2031 to submit a self study report, which means three years before that, we need to have the specialized program reports submitted and reviewed when you first hear 2032 it seems so far

Joi Patterson: 06:23

away, right? I know seems like you can take a nap, right?

Amy Vujaklija: 06:27

You can, like, rest easy. You've got some different things you're putting into place. You are reviewing the last accreditation report to see if there are some improvements that need to be made. But it's so far away you have time to review rubrics, update things, validate, check for reliability and validity. Time doesn't work that way in a university, it is high speed from August

Joi Patterson: 06:59

until December, and it's easy to put whatever is not in front of you off.

Amy Vujaklija: 07:05

You think about all of the things that are going on on multiple campuses, I'm sure, but on ours, we're looking at strategic enrollment planning, strategic mission and vision alignment and key performance indicators that's at the university level, and then for educator preparation programs, we are aligning to new standards and new initiatives at the state level.

Joi Patterson: 07:33

I do like that when you talk about new initiatives. And I see building a timeline. So if you have seven years of building a seven year timeline, as opposed to building a three year timeline of what are you doing for those first couple of years? I like that exploring new initiatives, because once you start exploring those new initiatives, and you're doing pilots and all of that, you got to make sure they're working right, and so you have to collect the data, you have to do the assessments, you got to do all the qualitative, quantitative stuff to see that it's working, do your pilots before you can even start to use it as real data for your accreditation. So I think maybe putting that into the timeline so that it's like a never ending, cyclical timeline that gives you some play time, but the play time is really exploring new initiatives, and that's where your improvement is occurring, right? We put in this thing that this new assessment, or this new thing we want to test to see if it's working, that's where you use your first couple of years, right?

Amy Vujaklija: 08:44

I want to make clear some points for our listeners, because sometimes it can be confusing. Well, how long is a cycle for accreditation? In some accrediting bodies, it's seven years. Others, it might be 10 for a renewal of accreditation. And the one we're most familiar with would be a seven year cycle. They want how many cycles of data, exactly. So they want three cycles of data,

Joi Patterson: 09:16

which is not necessarily semesters. It depends on the program. So, like a full circle of something, it

Amy Vujaklija: 09:24

could be depends on how often a course is being taught, right, what kind of cohort you have. It might be three years. It might be three semesters. But what you said, I want to tag on to that, if you are depending on a three cycle submission, and you are waiting until close to the time of when that analysis and that submission is due, you have not given yourself any time to consider. Continuous improvement, and that is the crux of some of these accrediting agencies, like the one that we submit for Educator Preparation, they focus very heavily on continuous improvement. So if you don't start at the beginning of your accreditation cycle, to test, to pilot to make improvements. Then when are you refining? When are you then improving? Yeah, so I think that that is something that gets lost, because that cycle is not intended to be truncated into three year data, right?

Joi Patterson: 10:44

So you just finished a very successful accreditation visit review.

Amy Vujaklija: 10:50

Thank you, by the way. And I know definitely a team effort.

Joi Patterson: 10:55

And that's a good thing that it was a team effort, so So you shared this responsibility. So what would you say a winning accreditation preparation looks like, and what does it look like years before the site visit?

Amy Vujaklija: 11:11

A lot of the preparation really relied on reflection from faculty and how the programs were going. What were the successes? What did outreach look like? What did partnerships look like? And if they can do either a semester or an academic year, reflection end of the year before they go off to summer on very key questions, key reflection topics to think about, both where things went well, but also their plans for improvement. That actually became a good foundation for writing the narrative. Yeah, that was built years before the self study report was due. What I had difficulty doing at that point was skinning it down to the character limits, because people had written so much and reflected so broadly and deeply on their programs, and so making it unit wide or a narrative that encompassed all programs was both challenging, but not because there was such a wealth of narrative already written and that was engaging all of the voices beforehand, without assigning someone here, right, right to this standard, they all had something to say about all of the standards.

Joi Patterson: 12:45

That's really, really good, because typically we assign things. So it's great that you gave different people opportunities to do cross standards. But I think the institutional habits that you've created, I think those are really good. If these are habits we always do, having an assessment system and saying, Hey, here's our assessment system. This is what it looks like, and putting that into practice. You know, I know that you have, you share data on a regular basis, and it's part of your program, their team meetings, so being able to share that information, one of the things that I reflect on, that I really like, that I did, and I did this many years ago, was kind of creating a history of change document, because it's hard to remember what I did three years ago, what I did four years ago, what I did five years ago. So keeping up with these are the changes that we made. This is why we made it. We changed it from this to this for this reason. Things like that can be really, really, really powerful document. I just want to credit you to putting in a lot of institutional habits and not heroic efforts, because otherwise and you've, you've experienced this too. You know this is not your first accreditation. So if you think back, or maybe you don't want to think back, but if you think back, and you had the faculty members that didn't want to participate or didn't give you what you needed on time, and then you have to play hero and try to get some things done, you know, by yourself, and then there's no buy in, and then you can't even have an institutional habit around it, because they didn't even, they didn't do the work. You did the work.

Amy Vujaklija: 14:33

And I want to go back to what you were saying earlier about the site visit, and that's where the facade can be broken, because when you submit that self study report, and then you get the feedback and they ask questions, you submit an addendum, they take that information, they develop their questions, and they want to talk to different people. Level. Well, if the people around that table, whether it's on Zoom or teams or at a conference table, if they have no idea what that question is asking, or they don't know how to respond to the question, then that preparation, that writing in a silo, or that taking charge and producing a great report. That's for not. But let me ask this. I mentioned silos. I want to ask you, like, how do leadership turnovers or silos impact that readiness, because I know we've had that experience in the past of maybe a change in leadership. What are your thoughts on how that impacts readiness? And maybe, let's take it a step further and say, how do we prevent it from having a negative impact? Right?

Joi Patterson: 15:57

Because what you don't want is for leadership turnover or silos to have an impact on accreditation. So when you leave Amy, where is the institutional knowledge and the history of all of that? So that's why it's important that you have systems in place that don't belong to you Amy, but it belongs to the department or the institution or to the program, and that is not hinged on one person, because as priority shift, things like that, once you leave, what you don't want to happen is that the communication gets weaker and that you feel like you're starting The accreditation all over again. And I know every time I stepped into a new role or a new university, there was a stall. I can remember even when I came here Amy, if I want to be honest, we applied for an extra year, right? So we needed more time because administration had changed, so there was a shift, and a holder of that information was gone, and so now we needed to be three cycles out in order to successfully go through this accreditation cycle. So we had to ask for a postponement, and fortunately, we were granted that, and that's what you don't want to happen. Just because one person leads, or two people leave, people retire, leadership changes, and that's not the holder of the accreditation. It should be the body that holds accreditation. And so if we're looking at that from a system, if we want to go all the way to the micro level of it, of where are those folders? Where the folders hell are they held on this person's personal drive, or they held where a community of people have access so that it doesn't start all over again?

Amy Vujaklija: 18:01

I'm glad you mentioned that because something as simple as surveying your community partners or district administrators, I found I was creating the forms on one drive, and thought no one else has access to this. We use a system, Survey Monkey, thinking also anything that you are creating, if it's in Google Drive or OneDrive who has access to this information. We now use a product. It's watermark, but I'm sure there are several other comparable systems out there without certain brand names, but it has a section that allows you to upload files Data and Tag to specific standards. So that's very helpful to start playing around. And right now I have the time to upload and tag and think about, well, how will I organize this for the next time? Because over seven years, it's a lot of stuff. And so whenever you have a person who's new, whether it whether leadership changes, you're going to have new faculty, new staff. Where are the meeting minutes for these advisory board meetings, or data from this particular program, or how many people graduated? Where does it live? And you're right, it has a lot to do with how that turnover, those silos, can impact how ready we are, right. But what do you think about the ownership of these, the data, the meeting minutes, and you know how. Does this perceived ownership affect that buy in?

Joi Patterson: 20:04

Yeah, well, it can't be job security. You know, you can't hold on to it because it means job security. You're the only person that knows this. It really has to be a shared institutional responsibility, part of your job as administration and leadership. You provide resources, you provide direction, you provide some frameworks and systems like that, but you are very dependent on faculty and the quality of instruction and education, right and the curriculum you are literally dependent on them for the quality of the education, for assessment. If they're not doing the assessment, then you have no data, and you're dependent on your support staff, right, somebody to help you with data and collecting and analyzing and things like that. So it can't be one person's job. It can't be this is my job security, if I keep it in my little drive over here, then no one knows what I'm doing, and they're dependent on me to give them this information. It really has to be an institutional, shared responsibility, and everybody really understanding their role. And I know it can be frustrating sometimes, too, and I'm sure you've gone through this. Anytime someone is not doing something, there's an impact, right? You got one faculty member who's not collecting the assessment that you as a leader, you have framed out. You know, you guys collectively decided that these are the assessments that we're looking for for accreditation. So you've decided that ahead of time, that these are all the assessments, the Look Fors and the assessments that we want. And if you have a faculty member who's not providing that assessment to the students, or collecting it, or providing you with the feedback, then that's a gap that you have. So it has to be everybody's job,

Amy Vujaklija: 22:10

in my role, in your role, in roles we've had, we are trying to comply with what accreditation standards are asking, we are at the minimum complying. And when we think about that shared responsibility, it seems that building that buy in or building that shared responsibility comes down to how much we believe in what we are doing. I think that's part of it. And I mean, yes, it can be, it's a policy. You have to do it.

Joi Patterson: 22:49

Yeah, that's, that's one way of getting that's one way of getting it done.

Amy Vujaklija: 22:52

It is, it is okay, so it is. But you believe in what you are doing. I think that does carry some weight. It carries a lot with it. When we are passionate about continuous improvement in meeting the highest standards, there's something that kind of brings people along.

Joi Patterson: 23:14

So how so? How do you establish Amy, the we, how do you build the shared responsibility instead of a top down compliance. How did you build the we that we're you're talking about, so that everyone's responsible?

Amy Vujaklija: 23:31

I don't think there is a simple answer to that. I think when everyone is being asked to reflect on their programs and their writing, their their narratives, and they're seeing how that interacts and that works together with as part of a whole unit. I think that's important. And just having that voice in being super transparent with where we are in the process. People want their programs. You talk to any of our faculty, they want their programs to be seen as the best, not just a program where the students can graduate or become licensed, but the best. So there is value in that reflection process, in looking at these standards, both at the program level, but also at the unit level. So I think that a leader who sees value in the process and can communicate that value is important,

Joi Patterson: 24:45

and I really like how it's built into the curriculum. Not only do you have your benchmarks, but you have your assessments, and then you use your watermark product, or whatever system you have that every faculty. The member has to use, and the students know how to upload their documents and all of that. So I really think that that helps with the we right, and I really think that that helps with you being audit ready. You know you always have something, always have something that you can grab, that you didn't have to call someone. You didn't have to ask them. You can go into your watermark system, and what do you call? Whatever you call your system that you're using watermark might be the brand name, but whatever system you're using, being able to go in there at a moment's notice and to have information about one standard or one assessment or one standard of information that you have things that are already ready at your fingertip, you know that your data person knows what information to be Collecting ongoing and how you fare in that situation. So I think the routines, hey, that's where we're at, right? Oh, we've made it all the way to this end of this podcast, and I think that that's really where we are, is having a system, right? Having a system, having routines and establishing a we mentality, just creating community around us, then you'll always be ready, and that's what you're supposed to be. And it's not just being ready for the accreditors, but it's being ready for the students that you serve,

Amy Vujaklija: 26:41

and that is the purpose of higher ed, is to serve the students and to serve the community. And I think that is a good place to pause and really think about and pose this question to our listeners as well. Is if you were asked to produce documents that were audit ready, Could you could you produce audit ready documents? I think we need to have another conversation just on what that might look like with a quality assurance system. Thanks for listening to teaching and leading with Dr Amy and Dr Joi.

Joi Patterson: 27:24

This podcast is supported by Governor State University.

Amy Vujaklija: 27:28

Show Notes and resources for this episode are available at G, O, v, s, t.edu/teaching,and leading podcast

Joi Patterson: 27:39

until next time

Amy Vujaklija: 27:41

keep growing

Joi Patterson: 27:43

as teachers

Amy Vujaklija: 27:44

and leaders.