Team Evaluator Training at the Annual Meeting 

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 4:00pm-5:30pm

Business/Finance Evaluator Training - In order to provide greater access to training for business office personnel, ABACC has agreed to host a training session within the framework of its convention program focused on business administrators who might serve as evaluators for ABHE.

Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 8:30am-Noon

Beginner/Intermediate Training - Persons interested in serving on Evaluation Teams for ABHE must participate in team training prior to their assignment to a team. The training is also required for persons who have not participated in training since 2006. Team visit procedures have been undergoing revision for the past two years in order to meet requirements of the U.S. Department of Education.

• Evaluation teams typically include five members, each with individual expertise in evaluating one of five major areas: administration/governance, academics/faculty, library/information resources, student life, and business/operations. We especially need more evaluators with the following professional expertise: library/information resources, business/finance, and student life.  
  
• Representatives of institutions seeking initial accreditation would also benefit from this training. The workshop will provide an insight into the responsibilities, priorities, and other aspects of the work of the evaluation team while they are on your campus. 
  

Veterans/Chair Training - Persons who have served on at least three team visits and wishing to investigate being a team chair should participate in this workshop. Experienced team chairs are strongly encouraged to participate in chair training at least every third year in order to ensure that they are current in their understanding and application of ABHE standards, policies, and procedures.

Saturday, February 21, 2009 - 8:30am - 10:30am

Is your institution scheduled for self-study and a reaffirmation team visit within the next 3 years? If so, please plan to join this workshop. Implementation of the 2004 standards requires a different approach to the writing of the compliance documents. Join us for a workshop that will prepare you to begin or to improve an existing process. Bring your institution’s Administrative Team or your self-study steering committee and let’s work through organizing your next Self-Study process. Topics to be discussed include: developing the leadership team; establishing the writing teams for the three documents (assessment plan, compliance document, and planning document); identifying the relationship between the three documents; and project timelines. This is a hands-on workshop for your institution, so please bring your notepads and an institutional personnel roster so that you may have the tools to be productive.  

If you intend to participate in this workshop, please email Tony Buchanan - tbuchanan@abhe.org with the name of your institution and approximately how many will be participating.

Education in Standards

We begin a series of workshops at the 2009 Annual Meeting that will specifically address issues of interpreting and applying ABHE’s Comprehensive Integrated Standards. The configuration of Standards addressed in each workshop corresponds to the manner in which Standards review is assigned to the various members of a visiting evaluation team. Six areas of the Standards will be reviewed this year: Administration (Standards 3, 4, 5); Assessment (Standards 1, 2, 12); Business/Finance (Standards 3,6); Student Life (includes Enrollment Management-Std. 7 and Student Life-Std.8), Academic (includes Faculty Resources-Std. 9 and Academic-Std. 11), and Library (including Library and other Learning Resources-Std. 10).

The intent of the Education in Standards workshops is that persons involved with the writing of institutional self-study documents will join persons on visiting teams and Commission members to discuss the standards and how they should be interpreted and applied in the evaluation process. This is particularly important if you are presently writing self-study documents or you have participated on visiting teams. ABHE Standards and accreditation processes will be strengthened as each of these three groups (i.e., institutional writers, visiting team members, and commission) is represented in the workshop.  

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