About the Visit
How to Prepare
Mission and Values
Future Directions
HLC Visit Prep Meetings
Self-Study Quick Facts
Review Team Members

Dear Members of the UW-Parkside Community:

In April 2013, the University of Wisconsin-Parkside will host colleagues from the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) to conduct the campus visit for the reaffirmation of accreditation through the HLC of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. The visit will culminate the self-study process, which is a campus-wide initiative focused on continuous improvement, assessment of our academic strengths, documentation of student learning, presentation of our commitment to assessment, identification of areas of improvements, and definition of our future goals.

For the next 18 months, we will focus as a campus community on critically examining everything we do and set our future course. Through the accreditation process, we will identify ways to strengthen our programs to ensure that they effectively prepare students for their roles in society.

As we conduct our work for the self study, we will continually refer to the criteria of the Higher Learning Commission:

• To clearly articulate our mission;
• To affirm our integrity,
• To evaluate our academic programs and chart their future, including building a culture of assessment throughout the campus;
• To demonstrate teaching effectiveness and student achievement;
• To foster and support inquiry, creativity, and social responsibility;
• To reaffirm our commitment to serve internal and external constituencies in a fair, honest, and forthright manner.

The development of our self study and the discoveries along the way will create new ideas and plans as we establish the "Path to our Promise." The success of the self study depends on your engagement and the complete involvement of the campus community. I invite your ideas, support, encouragement, actions, and thinking to maximize the benefit of the self-study process as we commit to continuous improvement to achieve our mission.

The accreditation team that will read our self study, and visit our campus, will be our peers—members of the faculty, administration, and staff of comparable institutions. UW-Parkside voluntarily participates in accreditation to demonstrate our commitment to quality and continuous improvement.

I am confident that UW-Parkside will emerge from the self-study process with a clearer sense of purpose, a sharper focus on our goals, and a renewed dedication to excellence. Our four Hallmarks, Academic Excellence, Student Success, Diversity and Inclusiveness, and Community Engagement serve as guideposts for our worthwhile work in delivering our mission. Through the self-study process we will recommit to our Hallmarks and strive to provide evidence of our continued effectiveness.

I look forward to working with all of you on this path to discovery and in meeting UW-Parkside's Path to our Promise.

UW-Parkside's Mission
Quick Facts
Chancellor's Office
Provost's Office
Strategic Plan
Institutional Snapshot (password protected)

Nature, Scope and Goals of the Self Study
Committee Structure
Organization of Self Study
Self-Study Design Document (PDF)
Fall 2012/Spring 2013 UW-Parkside Self-Study Timeline (PDF)
Self-Study Communication Plan (PDF)
Past Self-Studies

The resource room owns a long tradition in the history of university accreditation. The North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools began practicing its art in 1895, joining five other regional accrediting institutions. Since that time colleges and universities aspiring to accreditation began preparing documentation to provide evidence of mission and achievement, learning and research-a temporary archive filled with surveys, summaries and statistics spread carefully on tables and shelves in dedicated rooms awaiting an accreditation team. The evaluation team members comprised of peers entered solemnly and during their campus visit, intensely scrutinized the assembled papers until they convinced themselves of institutions academic, financial, philosophical and professional fitness.

Today, resources more often reside on drives and servers than paper and the resource room has become a website, organized according to the criteria established by the Higher Learning Commission to determine accreditation, fully searchable, downloadable and exceedingly accessible. This Virtual Resource Room represents the first collection of accreditation resources gathered by the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in fully electronic form. As this web site provides relevant objective information in a very accessible form, it mirrors the university's striving to provide the same to its students and the community that it serves.

The UW-Parkside Virtual Resource Room is available here (password protected).

Higher Learning Commission
Frequently Asked Questions
Criteria for Accreditation
Minimum Expectations for Institutions
Obligations of Affiliation

Presentations

9/1/2011
Presentation on Accreditation at UW-Parkside's fall semester Convocation
Presentation PDF

10/17/2011
Presentation on Accreditation for the UW-Parkside Faculty Meeting
Presentation PDF

10/18/2011
Presentation on Accreditation to UW-Parkside Leadership Assembly
Presentation PDF

10/19/2011
Presentation on Accreditation to UW-Parkside Student Government
Presentation PDF

2/13/2012
Presentation on Accreditation to UW-Parkside Leadership Assembly and Governance Groups
Presentation PDF

3/23/2012
Chancellor's Governance Group Meeting
Meeting Minutes

8/30/2012
Presentation on Accreditation at UW-Parkside's fall semester Convocation 2012
Presentation PDF

8/30/2012
Presentation on Fascinating Accreditation Facts presented at Convocation 2012
Presentation PDF

11/7/2012
Presentation on Fascinating Accreditation Facts presented Campus-wide
via video flat panels November 2012
Presentation PDF

12/12/2012
Presentation on Accreditation to UW-Parkside Leadership Assembly
Presentation PDF

Why should I care about HLC?
What does HLC do for students?
How can I be involved?
How does HLC affect/influence my curriculum?
What does accreditation do for UW-Parkside?
Why does UW-Parkside need to be accredited?
What is the benefit of accreditation?
Are all universities accredited?
Does accreditation cost UW-Parkside anything?
Does accreditation cost students of UW-Parkside anything?
Does the HLC need student involvement?
Will the HLC accreditors be speaking to students?
What is HLC accreditation? Why is it important?
What does the HLC look for when it accredits colleges and universities?
What will the HLC team do during the visit?
How will the findings be reported?
What kinds of recommendations might the Evaluation team make?
What will happen to the report when the visit is over?
What do we hope to learn from this process?
What is the purpose of the self-study report and process?