"Accreditation" is the process that ensures academic quality-control. In the United States, accreditation is voluntarily sought by institutions and is conferred by non-governmental bodies. In contrast to the practice in some other countries where the government provides accreditation, in the U.S. it is provided through a network of six peer professional groups that are distributed geographically. In the Chicago area, the group is the North Central Association (NCA). Loyola has been an accredited member of NCA since 1921.

Every 10 years, Loyola University Chicago undergoes an institutional accreditation process, giving the university the opportunity to conduct a self-examination to ensure that it is providing high-quality education. As part of this process, Loyola prepared during 2003-2004 a comprehensive Self-Study Report that examines all aspects of the institution. This will be followed by NCA's accreditation site visit April 11-13, 2005.

Accreditation by recognized agencies provides assurance to the public, in particular to prospective students, that an organization has been found to meet the agency's clearly stated requirements and criteria, and that there are reasonable grounds for believing that it will continue to meet them.

NCA accredits the institution as a whole, not individual programs. It verifies that the university has the wherewithal to offer whatever programs it proposes. So, this accreditation not only looks at our academic programming, but also at all other aspects of university life—financial, administrative and interpersonal. Since universities differ so much among themselves, NCA does not impose a single vision of what should occur. Rather, it measures the individual university against general criteria that apply to higher education as a whole and against the university's own statement of its mission.

NCA has just completed a multi-year process of revising its criteria. While the criteria have been announced—and Loyola has been working with them—we are among the first universities to be using them. In the past, accreditation focused on resources: Do you have what you need to do your job? Money? Buildings? Books? Faculty? The new criteria are much more interested in processes: Is your operation characterized by competence, creativity, responsiveness, etc.? As NCA literature states: "Are you future-oriented, learning-focused, connected and distinctive?"

The question used to be: Are you good? Now, the question is: Are you getting better? Answering this new question has been our goal over the past two years.

Yes, you can read about the five criteria in detail by clicking here.

1. Mission and integrity
   The organization operates with integrity to ensure the fulfillment of its mission through structures and processes that involve the board, administration, faculty, staff and students.
2. Preparing for the future
   The organization's allocation of resources and its processes for evaluation and planning demonstrate its capacity to fulfill its mission, improve the quality of its education, and respond to future challenges and opportunities.
3. Student learning and effective teaching
   The organization provides evidence of student learning and teaching effectiveness that demonstrates it is fulfilling its educational mission
4. Acquisition, discovery and application of knowledge
   The organization promotes a life of learning for its faculty, administration, staff and students by fostering and supporting inquiry, creativity, practice and social responsibility in ways consistent with its mission.
5. Engagement and service
   As called for by its mission, the organization identifies its constituencies and serves them in ways both value.

As part of the NCA accreditation process, Loyola completed a comprehensive Self-Study Report that examines all aspects of the institution. The Self-Study Report was sent to our evaluation team in early February for their review. The team will conduct the NCA accreditation site visit on April 11-13, 2005.

Work on the Self-Study Report was done during 2003-2004, starting in spring 2003 with the NCA steering committee's efforts to organize and collect university documentation related to NCA's five criteria for accreditation.

Then, Loyola did something very creative. At the time we were deeply involved in developing a new university Strategic Plan. Since North Central wants to encourage just this kind of thinking, we yoked our accreditation preparation to the strategic planning process. Rather than running separate processes, we monitored and contributed to strategic planning from the perspective of accreditation.

Finally, in summer 2004, five working groups were commissioned to assess Loyola's strengths and weaknesses in regard to each criterion in light of our new Strategic Plan and to make recommendations for continued improvement.

The result is Loyola University Chicago's 2005 Institutional Self-Study for the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, which may be accessed in its entirety.

Literally hundreds of members of the Loyola community participated in our preparation for the upcoming site visit. If you submitted material to the Steering Committee in 2003, if you participated in one or another of the Task Forces that contributed to the strategic plan, if you were a member of one of the five large Working Groups, if you participated in myriad discussions of program development, faculty development, learning outcomes assessment, creating and defining the new Core Curriculum—then you have contributed very directly to our preparation for the North Central visit.

Loyola will be visited by a team of consultant evaluators. Appointed by The Higher Learning Commission of NCA in consultation with Loyola, the team will be comprised of 11 administrators and faculty from other colleges and universities that are members of NCA. We can expect that individual members of the team will visit each of Loyola's Chicago—area campuses, including the Medical Center Campus.

Team members will want to have conversations with representative members from all segments of the Loyola community: administrators, staff, faculty and students. Some of these conversations will occur in small group settings and some will be individual interviews. Some will be scheduled in advance, but the visitors always reserve the right to arrange additional interviews or activities after they arrive. Quite literally, we will not have a complete list of all the visitors' activities until the three-day visit is over!

In the case of faculty, staff and students, the availability of a typical cross-section of each population will be sufficient to meet the needs of the consultant evaluators. But in the case of university leaders, the availability of all will be essential. This means that vice presidents, deans, department chairs, directors and managers should expect to be directly involved in the site visit.

Site visitors will move across the university to (1) observe programs and (2) talk to people. That means they will pay attention to each of our schools and colleges, to student affairs, and to support areas such as information systems, finance, etc. They will spend time on each of our campuses, and they will be sure to talk to faculty, staff and students. They will also talk to trustees and to leaders in the surrounding community. And they will review mountains of documentation, some of it collected in a Resource Room, and much of it available online.

• What is the mission of this program or unit? And how does it relate to the university's mission?
• Are you clear about Loyola's mission and how you fit in?
• Where are you going, as you move into the future, as a university and as a program, department, office, or whatever?
• How do you know you are successful? How do you measure effectiveness?
• How do you relate to the public and to all the stakeholders who are outside the university?

When you are asked questions like this, you should answer them candidly and thoughtfully. We are proud of our university and, above all, of its people. The interactions of the visitors with our faculty, staff and students will provide the best evidence of our fulfillment of the accreditation criteria.

By far, the best way to prepare for the visit is to read our Self-Study Report. If you do not have time to read the entire report (and it is a relatively short report, designed to be "reader friendly"), you can get a sense of the whole by reading the Overview, pages 1-10. Then, you might skim other parts of the report.

And if you have any specific questions, feel free to contact the coordinators for the accreditation process: Tim O'Connell (toconne@luc.edu); Marge Beane (mbeane@luc.edu); or Marian Claffey (mclaffe@luc.edu).