Interview with MSCHE’s Vice President for Institutional Field Relations and Commission Liaison, Dr. Tiffany Lee
In addition to the College’s comprehensive efforts regarding academic and nonacademic assessment as well as program review, it remains essential to cultivate a positive assessment culture across the community to provide guidance and support. This is achieved, in part, by ensuring the faculty and staff have a stronger understanding of and relationship with Baruch’s accreditor, Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) and its mission. With the aim of highlighting and strengthening this meaningful partnership, Melissa Sultana, in the Office of Assessment, Accreditation, and Institutional Effectives (OAAIE), reached out to Dr. Tiffany Lee to address common accreditation questions.
We invite you to read this informative interview, as it is relevant to all members of our Baruch community and the collective commitment to student success.
Q: How does MSCHE accreditation serve as a quality assurance mechanism for students and other stakeholders?
Dr. Lee: Our accreditation provides quality assurance for students, for the public, and for our regulatory partners through a multi-layered decision-making process that begins with peer review. Accreditation represents rigorous standards with decision-makers who act decisively to protect students while focusing on quality, equity, access, and student success. This includes attentiveness to degree completion, readiness for work, community roles, and civic engagement, as well as socioeconomic mobility. While accreditation activities lend to strengthening institutions, supporting innovation, and leveraging data in a way that allows institutional leaders to advance their missions and priorities, it is also about serving as partners in a regulatory triad responsible for compliance with federal regulations. As a member of the regulatory triad, we work closely with the United States Department of Education and state authorities to best serve constituents.
Q: Accreditation is not always a popular term. Having extensive experience in higher education as well, what would you say to dispel those assumptions?
Dr. Lee: Accreditation may not always be a popular term, but it is so frequently misunderstood. This is why I appreciate this opportunity to talk about accreditation. Accreditation is about so much more than compliance. It is about relationships. The work that our Commission supports through the accreditation activities is really driven to inspire institutional self-reflection, self-renewal, and improvement. Our accreditation activities, by design, are helping institutions do that. As institutions go through accreditation activities with us, they will take time to reflect, to pause, and to assess the work that they are doing to ensure that they are meeting the goals that they intend to meet for the benefit of the students and communities they serve. As a result of these activities, institutions are also able to demonstrate compliance with the Commission’s standards. Institutions that embrace and celebrate accreditation activities recognize it as a cycle of institutional improvement that makes them the strongest they can be, all for the benefit of the students we all serve.
Q: What role should faculty and staff play in the process of demonstrating and maintaining MSCHE accreditation standards?
Dr. Lee: All constituents are critical in our accreditation processes. This, of course, includes faculty and staff who play an essential role with the institution’s mission and with students. As a result, they serve a critical role with the institution’s accreditation. During the self-study process, all constituents should be engaged. The formal process of self-study includes a variety of perspectives from the campus community when selecting the steering committee and working groups that will drive the process, gather evidence, and create the narrative that guides this work. These groups include administration, faculty, staff, and students, where milestones along the self-study journey are also shared with the entire campus community, including the Board. Because the process of self-study is about institutional improvement, all constituents are self-reflecting, evaluating data, and making every effort to best understand where improvements can be made for the benefit of the students and the institution’s future. Faculty and staff do this regularly, so this opportunity is an opportunity to feature that and celebrate all of the ways faculty and staff contribute to the mission and institutional goals through their work.
Q: How does the process of complying with the standards and maintaining accreditation benefit faculty and staff directly?
Dr. Lee: Accreditation involves a holistic evaluation, and if you look at our Commission’s standards, we are not prescriptive. However, we expect institutions to be guided by the Standards and criteria within each standard to demonstrate that the institution meets certain expectations like all of our accredited institutions. Accreditation is about quality assurance. Faculty and staff will see their contributions reflected in critical areas of our standards, and truly across all of them. Because our standards are student-centric, much of what drives the analysis during accreditation activities is the work from faculty and staff. This extends across Standard I, Mission and Goals, Standard II, Ethics and Integrity, Standard III, the Design and Delivery of the Student Learning Experience, Standard IV, Support of the Student Experience, Standard V, Educational Effectiveness Assessment, Standard VI, Planning, Resources, and Institutional Improvement, and Standard VII, Governance, Leadership and Administration. The role of faculty and staff, and all constituents, sits within each standard in unique ways making quality assurance part of what they bring to any institution. In addition, MSCHE is a title IV gatekeeper. What that means is that many institutions access title IV, or federal financial aid, through our Commission serving as what is referred to as their title IV gatekeeper. Part of the work of MSCHE is ensuring institutions remain in compliance with applicable federal requirements, including through their title IV responsibilities, so that institutions receiving federal financial aid have in place what it needs to best serve students.
Q: MSCHE recently revised all seven standards and the requirements of affiliations. As a result, there is a stronger emphasis on 1) Application of the Standards within the Context of an Institution’s Mission and Goals, 2) Centrality of the Student Experience, 3) Reflection on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, 4) Emphasis on Data and Evidence-based Decision-making, and 5) Innovation as an Essential Part of Continuous Improvement across all standards. What should Baruch know about these revisions and how they impact our operations and assessments?
Dr. Lee: Our Commission is excited about the revisions of the standards, as were our institutions when we talked with them throughout the revision process. What is most important is that these standards were developed in collaboration with the institutions from across the membership, so they belong to all of us. The Commission listened to institutions, and this iteration of the standards eliminates duplicative processes and additional burdensome reporting by incorporating most of the former requirements of affiliation within the standards and streamlining the verification of compliance process that existed separately for some time.
In addition to considering the standards, it is also important to note that the Evidence Expectations by Standard also offer essential guidance for how institutions should manage their evidence with us in a streamlined manner.
Perhaps most importantly, the standards embedded guiding principles to frame the seven standards because of their importance in higher education: (1) Mission-Centric; (2) Centrality of the Student Experience; (3) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; (4) Data-Based Decision-Making; and (5) Innovation. All of our standards point back to these principles, which are values reflected within our institutional membership. These can also guide the operations and assessments at institutions and will leverage the many models we see across institutions for educational and operational excellence.
Q: How can institutions partner with MSCHE to strengthen collaboration to ensure a symbiotic relationship?
Dr. Lee: Every institutional representative is encouraged to become familiar with our accreditation and the principles that guide our relationships. Every institution has an Accreditation Liaison Officer (ALO) who serves as the conduit to the Commission for questions or conversations, and these individuals often hold specialized knowledge from working directly with us. We provide a Vice President liaison from our Commission to every institution, and this is to nurture the relationship we value with each of our institutions. In addition to this, we offer free webinars on a variety of topics throughout the year. We want your institution to participate in these events with us, and with however many would want to join us. There is no cap or limit, and, again, this is free. In addition to these free webinar events that are available throughout the year, the Commission holds its Annual Conference in December each year. This is another opportunity to join us and nearly 1,500 higher education professionals who come together there. The MSCHE 2024 Annual Conference – Protecting the Future: Champions for Higher Education – will be held December 11-13, 2024, in Philadelphia, PA, and institutional representatives are invited to attend and participate in three days of engagement, networking, and learning from those who are engaged in MSCHE’s accreditation processes.
Q: Baruch College has its next Self-Study Evaluation with MSCHE during 2027-2028. What should the College community do now to ensure we are ready?
Dr. Lee: Because we want institutions to see their work as a holistic cycle of evaluation, institutional leaders should always be thinking early about the self-study process. Always evaluating the work being done up against the standards, even before the official kick-off of self-study will position an institution best. Every institution can see and identify who will play essential roles in the self-study process. The institution should stay engaged with the Commission and access Commission resources to learn about the Commission’s expectations, including the standards for accreditation and requirements of affiliation, policies and procedures, and federal compliance requirements.
Again, our webinars and other resources that are available can be of value leading to the next self-study experience. Lean on your Vice President liaison at the Commission who can provide advice on early steps that are helpful before joining Self-Study Institute, the formal process leading to the on-site evaluation. For Baruch, that kick off will be in 2025; however, so much can and should be done as part of a holistic cycle leading to the critical accreditation activity of self-study.