Interview with Rita Cheng, Associate Vice Chancellor for Accreditation
By Laura Pedrick, assistant to the provost
From the February 2003 UWM Report

As the new Associate Vice Chancellor for Accreditation, what are your goals for spring semester?
My short-term goals are to become more knowledgeable about NCA accreditation requirements and also the direction NCA is taking toward reaccreditations of large public research institutions. I also will be working with the Provost and governance groups to put together a Steering Committee and will begin discussions with many individuals across campus about the steps we need to take to get underway.

What is the role of the Steering Committee?
The Steering Committee coordinates the accreditation process, putting together teams to address different aspects of the NCA standards. These teams should have strong representatives from all campus stakeholders. So there will likely be representatives from governance groups, including faculty, students, academic and classified staff, and other members of campus community. Overall, the Steering Committee and its teams will gather data to support reaccreditation, craft our institutional self-study, and help the University prepare for our site visit in 2004.

Sometimes there’s a perception that universities go this laborious procedure & then the self-study sits on a shelf—how can UWM benefit from the accreditation process?
We have a tremendous opportunity. In the Investment Plan we have a compelling vision of where we want to go as a university. We can use the accreditation process as a way of identifying where we are not aligned toward that vision and begin to seek ways to improve how we do things in order to advance toward our goal of being a premier urban research university. The other thing I think that will happen regardless of accreditation is that we must develop meaningful measures to assess our programs and activities, and we can benefit from data to better inform our decision-making.

The long-term goal is to use NCA accreditation as a forum—a very useful way for the university to adopt a perspective that facilitates continuous improvement and takes a critical look at what we’re doing and how we can do things better. Ultimately, everyone on campus should benefit.

You were very involved in the School of Business Administration reaccreditation this fall. What lessons did you learn?
That there are some real positive outcomes of getting people involved. Many people across the School devoted extra time to the accreditation, from conducting surveys to attending planning meetings to interacting with the accreditors during their site visit. The positive things that come out of an accreditation are that you become better informed about your strengths and weaknesses, you have an opportunity to improve what you’re doing, and you can move forward equipped with accurate information.

For example, during our early discussions in the school, it became clear that some of our expectations and our ways of operating in the school were not well aligned with our vision of becoming a leading urban research business school. We worked together to improve our merit system, graduate programs, and faculty workload to better reward scholarship and research productivity. In order for us to be a leading urban research business school, all of our processes needed to support scholarly output and high-quality graduate programs that will gain recognition from our peers.

The campus decided against pursuing accreditation through AQIP, but that doesn’t mean our accreditation will be the same as it was last time around. What are the changes NCA has made to the accreditation process, and how will they affect UWM?
Accreditation standards are in a continuous state of improvement themselves. There is a lot of focus on strategic planning and aligning the facets of the university to the strategic plan and also a great deal of emphasis on measurement of learning outcomes. That emphasis was not really as prominent in the early 90’s accreditation process. For UWM, these changes mean that we will have to demonstrate connections between our strategic vision and what’s actually happening on campus, and we will need to communicate a strong commitment to assessment.

As the accreditation process unfolds, will there be ways for people who aren’t on the Steering Committee or teams to get involved?
There will be many opportunities for input and involvement. I’m sure the Steering Committee will be very involved with schools and colleges, seeking data and identifying best-practice types of information. There will also be public forums and governance group input into the task as we go along.