Covenant College SACS Warning
Likely some of you have heard about the "12 Month Warning" status Covenant College was given by its accrediting association, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools for...
"...failure to comply with Comprehensive Standards 3.4.1, 3.4.4, and 3.4.10 (Educational Programs), Comprehensive Standard 3.7.1 (Faculty), and Federal Requirement 4.4 of the Principles of Accreditation, following a committee’s on-site substantive change review of the Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood Education degree offered in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a sample of the Quest program sites."
[link: Accreditation Actions Taken December, 5 2005]
The official "Disclosure Statement Regarding the Status of Covenant College" doesn't provide details concerning the specific "problems" due to the "official disclosure policy of the Commission" (fair 'nuff), other than it has to due with Quest & The BS in Early Childhood Education.
In the official SACS "Principles of Accreditation" you can find the exact guidelines which were broken/violated/infringed upon/not adhered to perfectly (not sure on the terminology here), but of course not how they were violated.
From what I can tell the violations seem to be organizational in nature, in particular reflecting the need for explicit procedural guidelines ("faculty candidates must be evaluated like this: ", "credit transfers must be handled in such and such a fashion"). It doesn't seem like any of the problems are things the College cannot address within its 12 month "Warning" period. Heck, odds are they're already taken care of most of them, if not all.
Here's the official response of the College addressing the situation:
You have probably heard or read that Covenant College has been placed on warning status by our accrediting association, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. This warning comes as a result of some questions about our adult degree completion program, reviewed in the fall of 2004.
The fact is that Covenant College remains fully accredited, with full accreditation status for the entire college program. However, the warning requires that we address specific issues regarding our adult degree completion program. We will supply all information requested by late summer 2006.
Two years ago, similar concern was expressed about Covenant’s financial condition, and the outcome was that Covenant was fully affirmed in its financial health.
We appreciate the ongoing support and prayers of our many constituencies as we work through this process. Please contact Dr. Jeff Hall, Vice President of Academic Affairs, for further details.
See a screencap of the full e-mail here.
The "similar concern" mentioned in this release has to do with when the College was placed on "Warning" status due to certain financial issues having to do with the awarding of too much financial aid. The money, through something approaching herculean efforts by the administration, was paid back and the SACS "Warning" status was subsequently removed.
Covenant College | By Josiah Roe | 12:28 PM
Comments
methinks you forgot to close your "blockquote" tag, which makes the whole rest of your site sit in the grey table.
This of course is a violation of articles 3.2.441.2 of the accreditation standards for the UHWAotS (Urban Hipsters Webloggers Association of the South) and will result in a 12 month warning period.
Posted by: Rob Hatch at January 20, 2006 12:40 PM
Josiah, I've been away 8 months already, and this was old news when I left, so I wouldn't be surprised if the 12 months wasn't about over by now. Hmmm, 01/20/2006 is your posting date... I had to look back to see if a glitch resurrected some old message. Doesn't appear so. I also seem to recall hearing through the grapevine that a follow-up SACS visit took place, perhaps last summer, and that "all was well". I'm sure Derek or someone will chime in with a more up-to-date "party line" soon, but until then, .... OLD news!
Posted by: Randy D. Smith at January 20, 2006 02:38 PM
Perhaps "old news" internally, but the official release from SACS didn't occur until the 5th of December (so over a month old).
Also, are you sure you aren't conflating the two warnings the college received? The first being for the financial issues mentioned above, and the second being, for 12 months until Dec 2006, relating to Quest/BS in Ed issues?
Further, even if there was some awareness on the college's part, the warning etc. isn't official until the official SACS meeting on December 5th of last year.
So there may have been rumors, and there may have even been concrete discussions concerning as much internal to College, but it was not public nor official until Dec 5th of last year. So if a month and a half is old news...I concede.
And finally, I can see no public statement from the College addressing the issue until today. So if anything the response is "new" news.
Posted by: JosiahQ at January 20, 2006 02:47 PM
I'm not sure I can be "conflating" if the word is not part of my normal vocabulary! :-) Yes, you're probably right... from the perspective I *had*, the two were one entity to me. The financials were the tip of the iceberg exposed by the DOE situation (where, IMHO, Covenant got hit for doing "the right thing"), and the Quest problem was just a by-product of that initial exploration. I guess I assumed they would be resolved together as well. Weird.
Posted by: Randy D. Smith at January 20, 2006 03:38 PM
Randy, no "party line" from me, especially since I am in no way involved in PR anymore. This is indeed a separate warning, though. They lifted the warning for financial aid irregularities, only to put us on another one for the irregularities in the Quest program. Pretty frustrating, really, because we (at least, the folks at the college responsible for these sorts of thing) put so much time and effort into making sure that all of our i's were dotted and t's crossed. I don't see why these issues can't be ironed out the same way the last ones were, but it sure is a pain to have to go through the process again.
[BTW, I hope Oregon is treating you well. I'm going to be in SF in Feb, and am looking forward to a little dose of the West Coast.]
Posted by: Derek at January 20, 2006 09:58 PM
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