The 2020-2025 NCC Accreditation Workgroup has begun its final year of work. Much has been accomplished since 2020, yet there are critical activities to complete in 2025.
The final two accreditation process pilots at the University of Alabama (Crossing Points Tier 3 Program) and the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg (Eileen Hoffman Hafer UMatter Program) are underway. These two programs will complete the accreditation process, including a self-study and an in-person review by peer reviewers, later this Spring.
During the Fall of 2024, the workgroup surveyed programs to gather information to help future planning and inform how we scale up program accreditation. Many thanks to those who participated in the survey; we truly value your input.
Over 50 programs responded, with the majority being approved Comprehensive Transition and Postsecondary (CTP) programs.
- 33% of programs expressed confidence in being fully ready for program accreditation
- 92% stated they are very familiar or somewhat familiar with the standards.
- Respondents identified the most helpful information about program accreditation from conferences, webinars, the “Becoming Accreditation Ready” course, and one-on-one conversations.
- 16 programs were identified as ready to apply for accreditation immediately.
- Respondents expressed interest in the following accreditation activities: joining a learning cohort and meeting monthly to prepare for accreditation, attending a one-day in-person workshop, and attending online seminars to prepare for accreditation.
These survey results and other activities, including consultation with existing program accreditors, will assist the workgroup in determining program accreditation costs and developing a plan to meet the interest of the many programs wanting to pursue program accreditation.
Peer reviewers play a crucial role in program accreditation – they are colleagues in inclusive higher education with in-depth knowledge of quality programming for students with intellectual disability. Peer reviewers involved in the accreditation pilots have helped inform the program accreditation process in numerous ways, such as providing feedback about the self-study, evidence, Weave accreditation portal, and peer reviewer report. They have created exemplars and rubrics to organize the work and thought deeply about how to provide information to programs about the standards. We could not have developed such a rigorous and thoughtful accreditation process without them. A special thank you to the NCC Accreditation Workgroup Members who have been two-time peer reviewers: Cindi May (College of Charleston), Carol Britton-Laws (University of Georgia), Bill Loyd (University of Iowa), and Ann Marie Licata (Millersville University).
This winter, the NCC Accreditation Workgroup, past peer reviewers, and program directors from pilot sites 1-3 worked together to develop a Peer Reviewer Handbook. This handbook is designed to complement peer reviewer training and provide information and guidance to volunteers who become peer reviewers. It will be a valuable new resource for future peer reviewers.
We are proud of the work done to date by the 2020-25 Accreditation Workgroup that built successfully on previous workgroup accomplishments and has brought us to this point in developing a robust, supportive program accreditation process—quality matters.