As the chill of autumn\u00a0tries its best to settle into southwest Ohio, I\u00a0think\u00a0about gathering together\u00a0some\u00a0good reads for the sit-by-the-fire\u00a0season. Might I suggest something right at your fingertips? Great reads, relatable to your personal life, impactful on your work life, and reflective\u00a0of your\u00a0Christ-centered community. Books that you will come back to again and again. I present to\u00a0you your Policy Handbooks. Ask\u00a0yourselves, when was the last time I read my Faculty Handbook or my Staff Handbook? How well do I\u00a0know them? Am I familiar with current revisions?<\/p>\n
The principal way that the Higher Learning Commission knows who we are and how we operate is through our written policies and procedures. For the upcoming visit, our Assurance Argument references many areas of the Personnel Policy Handbook<\/a>, the Staff Policy Handbook<\/a>, the Faculty Policy Handbook<\/a>, and the Student Handbook, aka The Cedarville Experience<\/a><\/em>. (Note: you may have to log in if you try to open these links.) Although these are separate documents, we all are governed by policies in 1 \u00a0or more of them.<\/p>\n University Human Resources maintains two (Personnel and Staff) Handbooks, while providing guidance and follow-through with the Academic Division on the Faculty Handbook.\u00a0The Student Handbook is on the Student Life and Christian Ministries website and is maintained by Student Life. \u00a0In this post, I will focus on the three that relate most to faculty and staff, although I encourage all of us to become familiar with the Student Handbook.<\/p>\n Updated on Oct. 1, 2015, The Personnel Policy Handbook is a current document that applies to ALL employees, and contains chapters on History, Mission, Beliefs, and Governance, General Work Place Standards and Other Conditions of Employment, Sexual Harassment Policy, Benefits and Services, Computer and Network Usage, Campus Safety, and Employment of Student Workers. The Personnel Policy Handbook contains nearly all the information that governs your work environment and your interactions with the University and your fellow employees.<\/p>\n According to the definition given on the\u00a0opening page of the Staff Handbook, Staff Personnel are employees who do not “carry faculty rank. This definition includes administrative staff who hold faculty status.” Furthermore, the Handbook states that “This Staff Handbook supersedes all previous handbooks, manuals, letters, memoranda, and understandings.” \u00a0It behooves us to be well acquainted with this book!\u00a0Here you can find Workplace Expectations, Compensation policies, Time Off\/Leave policies, Benefits, and Work Place Safety and Facilities.<\/p>\n The Faculty Handbook\u00a0contains\u00a0detailed descriptions of the Portrait Statements, Core Value Documents (different from Student Life Core Values), Recognition, Accreditation, and Governance, Faculty Personnel Policies, Academic Policies, Administrative Policies, Faculty Benefits and Compensation, Student Policies (which mirror those in the Student Handbook), and Academic Support Services.<\/p>\n As for myself, I’m in the process of reading through the Grievance Policy (5.2) of the Faculty Handbook. \u00a0This was revised in November 2012 by the Board of Trustees and faculty, having been previously revised in July 2004. \u00a0Having such a policy along with\u00a0procedures for following the policy are very important for HLC. \u00a0One of the Assumed Practices that will be examined by the Reviewers in our upcoming visit concerns our complaint process. \u00a0It states, “The institution provides clear information regarding its procedures for receiving complaints and grievances from students and other constituencies, responds to them in a timely manner, and analyzes them to improve its processes.” Having the formal Grievance Policy is an important piece of evidence for our reaffirmation of accreditation.<\/p>\n Now for some fun: in the side bar\u00a0of each future Accreditation Update post I will ask a trivia question from one of our Policy Handbooks. \u00a0The first response I receive via email will be publicly recognized.<\/p>\n Note the new web banner, “Yes, We Assess!” \u00a0Click on the banner to learn more about our Assessment Process. \u00a0Assessment is a necessary process that makes us excellent. We want to embrace it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the chill of autumn\u00a0tries its best to settle into southwest Ohio, I\u00a0think\u00a0about gathering together\u00a0some\u00a0good reads for the sit-by-the-fire\u00a0season. Might I suggest something right at your fingertips? Great reads, relatable to your personal life, impactful on your work life, and reflective\u00a0of your\u00a0Christ-centered community. Books that you will come back to again and again. I present… View Article<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}