Self-study nears completion

Engaging in a ritual that recurs every ten years, administrators have entered the final stage of revisions to the University's self-study for reaccreditation. The reaccreditation procedure begins with a self-study and ends with approval by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), the regional accrediting organization.

Tufts administrators say the University is virtually assured of reaccreditation. "For the majority of institutions, there isn't terror about whether you're going to survive or not," said Judith Wittenberg, an associate director of NEASC's Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, the reaccreditation body that will evaluate Tufts.

Because of their history, prestige, and financial resources, "schools like Tufts don't get de-accredited," said University Professor Sol Gittleman, a co-chair of the Self-Study Steering Committee. Despite the practical guarantee, however, reaccreditation is not merely a formality. "It gives you a chance to examine yourself after ten years," Gittleman said.

According to Dawn Terkla, the executive director of Institutional Research and co-chair of the Self-Study Steering committee, the University's self-study assesses the institution according to 11 standards and provides a "snapshot of where Tufts was in 2001-2002."

"It's basically personal reflection at the institutional level," she said.

A dozen committees of students, faculty, and staff compiled the study.

The Steering Committee will hold an open forum on Nov. 25 to hear suggested changes to the self-study draft. The draft is not in its final form, since "there may be something that one of these groups missed," Terkla said.

After the forum, the Steering Committee "will go back and decide how to incorporate what people say into that document," Terkla said.

A team of 12 to 15 faculty and administrators from other schools visits each institution to review the self-study and hold a community forum. During its visit to Tufts, which will take place Mar. 9-12, the NEASC team will formulate a preliminary report.

The team will look at "whether the way we project the institution is the way it really is," Terkla said.

"Nobody gets away without anything," she continued. "They'll have to say something."

President Larry Bacow and Provost Jamshed Bharucha will have the opportunity to respond to the report, Terkla said. Next November the NEASC team will report to the Commission, which will review the self-study, the team's report, and the reaction to the report, she said.

Following the Commission meeting, Gittleman said, the University will be given "a fairly detailed document" explaining the changes NEASC recommends.

The process of reaccreditation has "two very important thrusts _ quality insurance and continued quality improvement," Wittenberg said. "Every institution has a need for improvement."

Tufts will have to release an interim report five years from now to show NEASC that the plans for improvement are being implemented, Terkla said.

In formulating the self-study, the Steering Committee found it difficult to make projections for the future. Because the study was compiled at the beginning of Bacow's presidency, the Steering Committee had difficulty "knowing what the leadership would be like," Terkla said. And at the time, Bharucha had not yet arrived as the new provost.

Last year was not "the optimal time to make projections," Terkla said, and the study "doesn't really capture where the future's going." The study explains more "where we are than where we are going in the future," she explained.

Gittleman does not believe the results of the self-study will impact students. The self-study reports "things that we already know," and the changes it proposes are nothing new, he said.

But students nevertheless play an integral role in the reaccreditation process, according to Wittenberg, the associate director of NEASC. Students are "central... at every point," she said. The self-study's chief function is to analyze the "relationship between curricular and co-curricular."