NMC gains 6-year accreditation

The Northern Marianas College has gained a new and vital edge against its educational counterparts in the Pacific with its six-year reaffirmation as a fully-accredited community college granted by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

The WASC Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges decided to approve NMC’s six-year accreditation application, after a thorough review and deliberation of the institution’s Self Study and results of the three-day accreditation visit last October 2000.

CNMI’s lone postsecondary institution has always managed to obtain the maximum level of accreditation since 1985, when it initiated efforts to tap expert assistance to objectively assess the institution’s programs and services.

As a requirement to the reaffirmed accreditation status, ACCJC Executive Director David B. Wolf has directed the college to complete a Focused Midterm Report based on three specified recommendations cited by the WASC visiting committee.

Since NMC requested for a WASC comprehensive visit two years earlier than normal, the Commission noted that it has given the institution less time to address the recommendations suggested by the accrediting team in 1996.

Back then, the team had enlisted several recommendations that involved research, program evaluation, institutional effectiveness and planning, which the college had only partially addressed.

According to Mr. Wolf, the Focused Midterm Report is intended to assist the Commission in monitoring the progress the college is making on pending issues.

All institutions vying for accreditation are required to file a Focused Midterm Report in the third year after each comprehensive evaluation, to indicate progress toward meeting the evaluation team’s recommendations and forecast where the college expects to be by the next comprehensive evaluation.

Under its evaluation report, the WASC team listed top three recommendations which are required to appear as subjects in the Focused Midterm Report.

First, it is recommended that the college integrate its program evaluation efforts, institutional effectiveness assessment, and strategic planning implementation processes with its methods for resource allocation and distribution.

Second, the college should direct sufficient resources to its institutional effectiveness efforts in order to built its capacity to collect, analyze and use information for effective institutional decision-making.

And third, NMC should institutionalize an integrated, systematic process for evaluating program effectiveness.

Mr. Wolf also reiterated that the Commission was very impressed by the list of commendations enumerated by the visiting accreditation team.

He noted that the committee found NMC’s Self Study to be candid and accurate, and represented the issues facing the college in a manner that was helpful to both evaluating panels.

The ACCJC director also cited merits to me college faculty and staff’s commitment to its students’ success, the work done to improve and maintain facilities, efforts to clarify the role of the Board of Regents and the duties of its members, the results of working more collaboratively with government leaders, and the integration of technology more thoroughly into the instructional program and the operations of the college.