CWU Receives Positive Commendations from NWCCU

October 29, 2009

Ellensburg, Wash. — After recently spending three days at Central Washington University, a Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) evaluation team announced its preliminary findings to campus Oct. 21. Its full report will be available later this year.

The NWCCU — under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation — is one of six nation-wide regional accreditation agencies that conduct evaluations of post-secondary educational institutions in the Pacific Northwest. It reviews higher education institutions for performance, integrity, and quality in order to merit the confidence of the educational community and public. The 163 regional schools that participate do so voluntarily.

“The evaluation team found CWU strong in several areas,” says Philip Backlund, communication studies professor, who also led the self-evaluation committee. “We received commendations in the areas of faculty, staff and student civic engagement, environmental sustainability, quality facilities and a strong commitment to place-bound and professional students.”

President James Gaudino says the CWU team that spent two years preparing a self-study for the accreditation process did an excellent job and that he was pleased with the entire process.

"Thanks to the outstanding leadership of Dr. Backlund — who served as our executive director for the self-study — and to the team he assembled, CWU engaged in a healthy process that revealed our strengths both in relation to the commission standards and to our own mission,” Gaudino says. “It also focused our attention on areas where we can improve our processes and outcomes.”

The self-study culminated in a large report that is posted online (www.cwu.edu/~nwccu/standards/index.html) and was made available to NWCCU evaluators.

As anticipated by the CWU self-study committee, evaluators recommended Central strengthen the relation among planning, budget, and assessment, enhance institutional research and data integrity toward greater transparency of results, and collect evidence supporting use of assessment results, particularly as they relate to general education, Backlund says.

“I believe it was a positive visit,” he says. “If something had surprised us, it would mean we hadn’t done our job.”

The evaluators’ visit is a hectic one that requires a schedule of about “60 hours nonstop”, says Joe Fedock, evaluator team chair and Montana State University’s interim provost and vice president of academic affairs. “We have meetings on campus all day for two days, then finish up on the third. At the end of both days, we sit around as a team and assess information. It’s an all-nighter on the last night, because team members have to provide a draft report of their section for the next day,” Fedock explains. “It’s a whirl-wind but very rewarding. You learn so much about best practices and can potentially apply that to your own institution.”

The self-examination process is just as important as the actual results, says Vice President for University Relations, Libby Street.

"We took the process seriously, and as a result learned a great deal about ourselves. Our self-study report will serve as an outstanding historical record of CWU as it was in 2008-2009."

As part of the self study, NWCCU requires that CWU review several specific areas including responding to previous evaluations, examining its own mission, goals and planning, its educational effectiveness, student relations, faculty, information resources, governance and administration, finance, physical resources and institutional integrity.

NWCCU commissioners will meet Jan. 13 to determine CWU’s accreditation status, which will be based on a confidential recommendation by the evaluation team. To learn more about the NCWWU, go to www.nwccu.org.

Central Washington University is a master's degree-granting institution with approximately 10,000 students and 1,500 faculty and staff. More than 160 undergraduate and master's degrees are offered. Founded in 1891, the Ellensburg campus is located in the heart of Washington State, nestled between the Cascade Mountains and the Columbia River. Since 1975, CWU has served the needs of placebound students at six university centers throughout the state. CWU is an AA/EEO Title IX Institution.