As this week’s post falls during early registration for students, it seems fitting to focus on one of Cedarville’s newest initiatives that touches almost all of our lives and is required for\u00a0Accreditation as well.\u00a0The following comes from Mandy Nolt, Accreditation and Assessment Specialist, and member of both the Academic Advising Task Force and the HLC Steering Committee:<\/p>\n
A large part of accreditation focuses on continuous quality improvement.\u00a0 Fortunately, this lines up well with our Christian values here at Cedarville.\u00a0 We strive to provide quality programs for all of our students, and realize that we never \u201carrive\u201d at perfection.\u00a0 We continually examine our programs, both academic and non-academic, to make sure they are always improving.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.\u201d\u00a0\u2013 Colossians 3:17<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why, when the Higher Learning Commission added a piece of the accreditation puzzle called the \u201cQuality Initiative,\u201d it seemed like a good fit.\u00a0 Here was our chance to take a good look at one area of the University that hasn\u2019t been looked at for a long time:\u00a0Academic Advising.<\/strong><\/p>\n Enter the Academic Advising Task Force (AATF).\u00a0 Under the direction of Dr. Pam Johnson, the AATF was charged with getting a read on the climate of academic advising from the perspective of the Advisees (Students) as well as the Advisors (Faculty and Staff), and then working to find ways to improve the process.\u00a0 After attending a National Academic Advising Association Summer Institute to help formulate some of the goals and objectives of such an endeavor, Dr. Johnson prepared a proposal to explain our goals to the Higher Learning Commission, and we were given the green light.<\/p>\n Already, great strides have been made.\u00a0 Surveys were sent to all current sophomores, juniors, seniors, graduate students, and recent graduates to get a feel for how they view their advising experiences.\u00a0 Faculty and staff who advise students were also polled to determine the frustrations that might be present in the current system, and how they would like to see things changed.<\/p>\n The general consensus was three-fold:<\/p>\n Since we can\u2019t add more hours to the day (sigh\u2026oh that we could), the Task Force decided to tackle the time issue with the idea that having the resources in one centralized location would help the advisors find answers to common questions quickly instead of having to thumb through the catalog, call the registrar\u2019s office, or search our entire CU website.\u00a0 Thus, the Academic Advising Handbook<\/a> was born.<\/p>\n Led by Curtis Cline, a Google site was created gathering all the foreseeable resources an advisor might possibly need when advising.<\/p>\n Then, to address the need for clear expectations of both the advisor and the advisee, a subset of the Task Force was formed.\u00a0 Using a new mission statement created by the Task Force, this group developed goals and objectives including the responsibilities of Advisors and Advisees.\u00a0 Soon these goals and objectives will be presented to the faculty as a whole.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Office of the Registrar and the Information Technology Department have been hard at work to set up, train, and implement the new Student Planning software to help address the \u201ctime\u201d issue and to contribute to the paradigm shift that needs to occur…from \u201cadvising is registering\u201d to \u201cadvising as teaching and mentoring.\u201d\u00a0 The Student Planning program will relieve faculty of the pressure and worry caused by the current registration process and degree audit system. It will also provide students with a powerful, accurate tool to create, implement, and monitor their educational plan within an information-rich program.<\/p>\n All in the name of continuous quality improvement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As this week’s post falls during early registration for students, it seems fitting to focus on one of Cedarville’s newest initiatives that touches almost all of our lives and is required for\u00a0Accreditation as well.\u00a0The following comes from Mandy Nolt, Accreditation and Assessment Specialist, and member of both the Academic Advising Task Force and the HLC… 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\/43"}],"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=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/47"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/accreditation-update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n