July 14, 2003 Accreditation Newsletter
By Chris Bragg, Chair, Accreditation Steering Committee

Welcome back to the Accreditation 2005 website! On behalf of the Accreditation Steering Committee, I want to thank you for stopping by and taking an interest in this important process. We are in the middle of several major projects this summer including:

• Survey design
• Accreditation Kick-off planning
• Data gathering

Survey design

If you like to answer questions, then you’ll love the upcoming semester! In order to find out how well CSI is meeting its mission, we need feedback from you. Whatever your role may be at CSI (faculty, staff, administration, student, etc.), we want to hear from you and what you think about your experience at CSI. John Hughes and I are spending this summer taking recommended survey questions that we received from the Accreditation Steering Committee and designing surveys for all parts of the CSI community. Please help us out with this important facet of the self-study by taking the time to fill out and return your survey. More information will be coming at the fall Accreditation Kickoff!

Accreditation Kickoff Planning

Speaking of the fall Accreditation Kickoff, we have several activities planned for in-service week. President Meyerhoeffer has agreed to close the college the morning of August 18th so that the entire campus community can join in the kickoff. We will begin with a 7:30am breakfast near the Fine Arts building followed by the President’s State of the College address at 8:00am. Ron Baker, Deputy Executive Director of the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges, will address the group and 9:00am; we will have live music, multi-media presentations and awards mixed in along the way. Watch for more information and we look forward to seeing you in August!

Data gathering

The self-study that we are putting together as part of the accreditation process is a document that takes a snapshot look at CSI. For our purposes, the snapshot will be taken during the fall 2003 semester. We are working this summer to coordinate the massive data gathering process that will be occurring this semester. We will literally be gathering information from every corner of campus in order to get a good picture of the college.

Once again, CSI is fortunate to have several seasoned accreditation evaluators on this campus to help lead us through the accreditation process. Dr. Buettner, Dr. Beck, Dr. Burton, Mike Mason, Jeff Harmon and I have all been on accreditation visits to other colleges, and we look forward to discussing how the process works and what we can do to prepare for the evaluators’ visit in 2005. Feel free to stop by and talk to any of us about questions you have.

Take a look around the website and familiarize yourself with the accreditation process. If you have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to contact me, or any of the other people on the Steering Committee. We look forward to Celebrating Success and Innovation at CSI with you in the future!