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Institutional Effectiveness

Accreditation for Faculty

NWCCU Reaffirmation of Accreditation - Faculty Members

A Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) peer review committee comes to Ellensburg every seven year, with a midcycle review in year three, to evaluate the extent of CWU’s mission fulfillment based on the NWCCU Eligibility Requirements and Standards for Accreditation.

Any NWCCU Eligibility Requirement or Accreditation Standard is fair game for a question from an evaluator. Evaluators will likely be particularly interested in your perspectives on CWU’s student profile, mission, challenges and adaptability, sustainability (both financially and in terms of the quality and competitiveness of academic offerings and student services), and interactions between/among faculty, staff, students, and administrators.

Below you will find a series of sample questions the NWCCU evaluators may ask.

  • What are the primary, most important, changes faculty have implemented to improve your department/program?
    • What data or information did you use to determine these specific changes were necessary?
    • What data or information did you (or will you) use to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of these changes?
    • What has been the impact of those changes? To date, how effective has these changes been? What is working well - and what is not?

Examples of change include:

  • Program-level and/or course learning outcomes - or other curriculum changes
  • Policies, procedures, or practices
  • Pedagogy
  • Faculty and staff hiring
  • Faculty and staff professional development
  • Facilities/equipment
  • Workload
  • Advising
  • Experiential learning opportunities
  • Resource requests/allocations
  • Given the time, energy, and effort devoted to General Education, you are also likely to be asked the following:
    • How would you describe the current GE at CWU?
    • What, if any, do you see as the benefits of the GE program?
    • Do you see any drawbacks to the new program? Can those drawbacks be mitigated? If so, how?
    • How does your department/program contribute to the current GE?
    • To what extent has your department/program been involved in the assessment and, by extension, improvement of the current GE?
  • Evaluators are very interested in assessment and improvement of student learning. They are likely to ask the following:
    • What are your program learning outcomes? When were they last reviewed/updated?
    • What are your course learning outcomes? When were they last reviewed/updated?
    • Do you have an Advisory Board and/or other method(s) for ensuring your program-level and course learning outcomes are current?
    • Do you have a curriculum map of program-level learning outcomes and specific courses?
    • Please describe your department’s/program’s assessment process(es). Who is responsible for department- and program-level assessment?
    • What have you learned from department/program/course assessment – and what changes have you made? What has been the impact of those changes?
  • Specialized Accreditation – same questions as above with the addition of the following:
    • If your department/program holds or is seeking specialized accreditation, please provide a summary of the department’s/program’s status and, if applicable, history of specialized accreditation.
    • If your department/program currently holds specialized accreditation, what challenges did you encounter in obtaining specialized accreditation? How did you address those challenges?
    • If you are seeking specialized accreditation, what challenges do you anticipate? What is your plan for addressing those challenges?
  • What is the primary mission of the institution?
    • Who are the students CWU serves?
    • How do faculty support the mission and CWU’s students?
  • To what extent is the insitution fulfilling the mission?
    • Where and in what ways is the institution meeting or exceeding the expectations it set for itself?
    • Where and in what ways is the institution falling short?
    • How is the institution addressing those shortcomings?
  • To what extent is your department/program contributing to the mission?
    • Where and in what ways is your department/program exceeding the expectations you have set?
    • Where and in what ways is your department/program falling short?
    • What are you doing to address those shortcomings?
  • Since the last NWCCU site visit, in what ways have the institution and your department/program had to adapt to changing circumstances - in terms of both external and internal factors?
    • How well have the institution and your department/program adapted to change?
    • Thinking about the future, how well-equipped are the institution and your department/program to adapt to change?
  • What are the primary challenges the institution and your department/program have had to overcome since the last NWCCU site visit (Fall 2018)?
    • What are the primary challenges the institution and your department/program currently face?
    • What challenges are on the horizon?

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