The Peak

SFU seeking accreditation from U.S. firm

By David Dyck

SFU’s application for accreditation in the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), an independent U.S. post-secondary quality assurance organization, has been approved. The accreditation, which is necessary for our membership in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), will assess the academic quality of SFU.

The NWCCU currently oversees the accreditation of 162 institutions in the American northwestern states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. SFU will be among the first Canadian institutions to join the list, and the first major post-secondary research institution to receive a U.S. accreditation. Capilano University in North Vancouver is also seeking accreditation by the NWCCU.

Canada has no such national accreditation organization. Currently, the administration assesses quality on a departmental basis, according to Glynn Nicholls, the academic planning and budgeting director in Strand Hall, who is the accreditation project manager.

Every seven years each academic department is reviewed, wherein the department does a self-study to assess teaching, research, and student involvement. An external reviewer is then brought in to assess the department and write a report on their observations. Based on these reviews, the dean and administration work out an action plan.

“The problem with this is that it doesn’t ever look at the institution broadly,” Nicholls told The Peak. “We’re looking at independent little departments. What we see in this accreditation process is virtually the same process but at a broader institutional level. The reviewers will come and look at administrative systems, look at the way we do planning, look at what our students are thinking, what our staff are thinking, what our faculty are thinking, and looking at the broader view.”

Just as in the departmental reviews, the university as a whole has to produce a self-study; this is currently the stage that the NWCCU accreditation process is at.

This is expected to take about 18 months, after which SFU will be visited by several reviewers from American institutions, chosen by the NWCCU based on what SFU says that its focuses are. Providing that SFU passes this, our status will change from applicant to candidate, which is the stage that Capilano University currently is in the accreditation process. After that, SFU serves an apprenticeship, lasting three to four years, where SFU will submit a report every year. If SFU maintains a certain standard over those years, it will become fully accredited.

Nicholls isn’t worried about SFU passing the review. “We’re a good university, we have the credentials, we have the facilities, we have the staff, we have good students, so there should be no problem.”

The university anticipates that this will enhance SFU’s image on an international level. “A globally recognized guarantee of quality will increase SFU’s profile abroad and help us attract the best international students,” said Jon Driver, VP-academic and accreditation sponsor at Strand Hall.

“We have to remain competitive, and this will allow us to say, ‘You want to go to Washington State, or you want to go to Portland? SFU is in the same league.’ If we weren’t we could say that we’re a good Canadian university, but we don’t have a comparative story to give them,” Nicholls added.