How to Choose The Best Accredited School According to an Accreditation Expert

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This is your favorite time of the week with another episode of MU Talks back in the studios of Multnomah University. And boy, we got a great guest for you today.

Yeah, that's right. Today we're sitting down with Multnomah University's Director of Institutional Effectiveness, Lydia Gillespie. Lydia has been working in higher education for six years and she's Multnomah's expert in both accreditation and assessment. Welcome, Lydia.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, we're really glad that you're here. Lydia, I've known you for just a little while now and I've learned a lot about how important both accreditation and assessment are for higher education institutions like Multnomah. But I imagine some or a lot of our listeners might not realize just how important those words having an accreditation is when they're choosing schools to attend. So I'm really glad that you're here because I want to talk with you about accreditation, what it is, and how to use that knowledge when you're looking at schools for yourself or for someone that you love that might be attending a school. So maybe we should start with what is accreditation?

Yeah, so accreditation. The United States has a really unique system for the way that we handle higher education and ensuring quality and higher education. And that really is where accreditation comes in. So an accredited organization is one that has a body that has overseen its quality and has kind of given it a thumbs up. So the way that that works in the United States though, is that it's peer informed. So we voluntarily, schools voluntarily participate in accreditation with specific organizations and it's through this peer review process and a cycle of self review and then peers coming in and validating that self review, that quality quality of a university, their learning programs, their support of their students is evaluated and given approval for quality. And the most important thing to know about this is that in order for an organization to give out federal financial aid, we have to be accredited. So this part also ensures that the tax dollars that are invested in education for students are well invested.

So is this just really a series of checkboxes that they just go down really quickly and check or like what's the process like? What's it like for university to be accredited?

Yeah, it's a significant amount of work to be accredited. It usually operates on a 7 to 10 year cycle where you might have some checkpoints along the way with your accreditors, but every seven to 10 years there's a major accreditation re evaluation essentially. And during that cycle what you're doing is you're making sure that there are a number of standards that are outlined by the accrediting organization of this is what quality would look like in these different areas. And then it's our job as a university to make sure we're implementing those and doing a self reflection process to say, okay, if we're supposed to be doing ensuring academic quality, what does that look like and how do we do that? And that's usually where assessment starts to play into accreditation. They really are kind of married. You can't separate the two. So the assessment piece for the academic programs would be like, this is how we know that the academic program is successful. And we go through this study and self reflective process year over year. And then it culminates in this larger 7 to 10 year evaluation process which is very comprehensive. And it's at that point that you get reaffirmed for your accreditation for the next seven to 10 years. So it's, it's a cyclical process that requires constant monitoring and self reflection and participation.

So excited I was looking forward to having Lydia with us. Not only that, she oversees the institutional effectiveness. That's a work in itself, but assessment as well. Can you help us understand the process of assessment from your perspective? So when we set out to actually create assessment, so your approach to assessment, your thinking of assessment, how important it is, and I will want to land on the voice of students in assessment.

Yeah. So assessment is. And we do that at varying levels throughout the institution. It really is a tiered approach. It starts at a course level. Courses are what make up our academic program. So we do the programmatic level assessment and the programs and then the student support services really all culminate into our institution. So assessment can happen at an institutional level as well. My office really focuses on the institutional level and the academic program level. So the piece of that that's really important is making sure that we have a process that's simple and sustainable. Something that allows faculty members to come together and reflect on and evaluate how well students are learning, what they're supposed to be learning. So all programs make promises to their students about what they're going to be able to learn or do by the end of their program. And so the academic program assessment process is us sitting down with faculty, coordinating a process that allows faculty to reflect on the learning that students are demonstrating and then continuing to make improvements to the way we offer our curriculum, the way things are taught, the way we support students in their learning, and then make changes on that to continue to support students in their learning and advancement.

So A continuous learning loop. And how important is the voice of students? So I've learned from you. I think I've learned from you. And you've done a great job to always do assessment. And in our time together, to teach me again and again and again about direct measures and indirect measures. How does that. What, what's the voice of the students in. In the learning process of a university? Is it accredited?

Yeah, that's a great question. It is very important to have student input. We, especially at Multnomah, is very student centric about the way that we want our, our university to run this. This. We're focused on students and their success and we can measure or attempt to measure what they're doing in the classroom, but without their perspective and input on that learning, our picture is incomplete. So being able to have students speak into the process as well is really important. And that usually comes in the way of, like, course evaluations. At the end of a course, fill out this questionnaire, let us know, what did the faculty member do well, what did you like about the course? What didn't you like? What ways can this be improved? That's one vital way that we cyclically have this type of collection information collected from students. Another opportunity is to contribute and contribute to or participate in focus groups. So sit down with people who are asking specific questions around, what did you learn well? What didn't you learn well? And answer those types of questions. Other survey points are a really important way that we like to incorporate the student voice into that. And a student at Multnomah, the student governing body is a place that we're learning to explore how to continue to incorporate the students into the assessment process.

So here's a question for you. Coming out of, zooming out of Multnomah and assessment and all this. How does somebody get into this career? Why assessment? Why institutional effectiveness? Why for you? I'm not asking for somebody else, but this might be, what, what qualities? What really excites you about this?

I really like assessment and accreditation because I'm about quality. I want the education that is offered to be quality education for students. I want students to succeed and to be able to go on and do important work with the degrees that they earn. And so being able to be a part of that process and ensure quality as a Christian university as well, being being able to say that we're good stewards with the resources that God has given us is an important thing for me. And this work contributes directly to that, to being able to say, are students learning what we promised that they would learn. If they're not, how can we improve that and change that? If they are, then let's celebrate that. So that's really what drew me into the work.

So does every, any institution that I can maybe like find in a Google search that offers degrees, is that necessarily accredited just because, because they have degree offerings?

No, not necessarily. There. There are a significant number of universities, colleges are accredited. There are some that are unaccredited, but that's always disclosed their accreditation status. Whether it is accredited or unaccredited is disclosed on their website. So if you're looking for a school, then, you know, make sure that you dig into the website, search for accreditation on their website, those types of things, to be able to get a sense of which body accredited them. If they're unaccredited, then that'll come up as well. And from when you're doing that search as well, when you figure out who they're accredited by, you can go to that organization's website and look up their last letter from their last accreditation visit. So what was the last final word that came from this accreditation organization on how the organization is doing in terms of their compliance? Wow. With the standard. So that can be helpful to get a sense of, well, what, what is the university invested in and what are they not? And I think the thing to know about that process is that this is a self reflective process. So when you go and look on that accreditor's website and you find the letter, there's going to be things that they say, these are our accommodations, these are things that a university does great and these are areas where we want them to grow. That's normal to see kind of both of those on the letter because this is a growing process. We're focused on continually improving, continually reflecting. But that letter can be really helpful in getting a sense of what does the university do well in terms of peers and what they've said and observed that the university does well and what are the areas that they're continuing to grow in. Something to be aware of.

So I consider myself blessed beyond belief of having to witness Lydia's work in at least two institutions. And this is not easy work. This is complex work that needs somebody that can actually see the big picture, but also can get their hands really dirty with course objectives and down to the very detailed things. So here's a question for you. So the reason I say this, and I give a massive shout out to Lydia for her work, for her professional approach to how she does this, for her excellence in her work and for her results. Results. You know, the Lord said, we will know them by their fruit. And there's tremendous, tremendous, great, great success stories that you have even so far in this very complex space. How does one become successful at this kind of work? What do you, looking back, things that you've learned, things that you would do different, but also what is really the key to your success stories so far in this space?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I would say that in order to get into this work, you have to be able to think, like you said, big picture, understand where things are going in terms of the university and understanding just broad pictures and then being able to drill in as well and to understand the standards and to read those. It's similar sometimes to reading, you know, what you would think of as like laws or, you know, protocols or those types of things is detailed policies. Policies. Yeah. There's a lot of information to review. So being able to be critically minded and be able to read the detail and then take the detail and apply it to kind of the larger scale is really important. The other thing that is important in this role is the job of institutional effectiveness and assessment and accreditation, really, is to have really broad knowledge and connections across the university and then be able to kind of tie and weave that all back together, one for assessment purposes, to be able. So we know what every department and every area is doing and how they're assessing that and then taking that data and being able to combine. Combine it in a way that then informs improvement efforts. So it requires a lot of being able to reach across traditional silos and make connections with people in other organizations or, I'm sorry, in other parts of the organization and then bring them along in the process of how are we going to measure that? How are we going to improve that? What does that look like? So it takes that ability to zoom in and out and then the ability to really reach across those barriers and build relationships. I find I see that my office really is a big bridge building office. We just connect all of the different offices and the work that they're doing.

That's exciting. One more question for you. I have, I have quite some questions in the space. I've seen you once do something that was quite innovative and I was really excited about that and I was curious to see some lessons learned from that. You have connected one department from one institution with another department from another institution and they got to review their own, their own program. Now that took a great deal of humility from those program chairs to actually open up their programs. But, but tell me a little bit about that idea where what have you seen that worked well with that? The value in actually connecting and, and sharing some resources, sharing some thoughts, connecting people a little bit about that if you can.

Yeah, that's a great question. So what had happened is that we had our Masters of TESOL program or Teaching English as a Second Language program that was under assessment. And because we're a small university, we only have one full time faculty member that participates in teaching and leading that program. Everything else is filled in by adjunct faculty members. So in the assessment process that we utilize, we utilize faculty jury to review certain samples of student learning. And we weren't able to do that well with just, and have good broad perspective on the assessment with just using a single faculty member. So what we needed to do was to reach out and be able to find a way to build a robust jury of faculty members that could speak into are the students learning? Are they not? How do we improve that? The constant questions of assessment. And so I had a connection with my previous organization, Moody Bible Institute, and they had a similar dilemma where TESOL, teaching English as a second language can be a smaller field. And so it kind of naturally effervesced where I reached out to their director of institutional effectiveness and we were able to connect and swap faculty members. Our faculty member went and served on their assessment jury, their faculty member came and served on our jury. So it created a lot of collaboration in that process. And you're right, it did take a lot of humility. But what we were able to see was a lot of fruitfulness where blind spots that we had about the program because we're in it and we live it daily were able to be pointed out of, oh well, maybe you could build some more formative types of assessments of assignments into this process. You know, likewise, how do you, how do you pivot that into online worlds and how do you make that work really well? And so that we just, we learned a lot from each other and being able to reach out and include multiple perspectives. And it continues to lend itself to this United States style of accreditation and higher education quality assurance where we're doing that via peer review and peer self, their review of our self reflections. And so it just brought that element of saying we want to do well, we're going to do self reflection on that and we're going to invite our peers to reflect on our reflections. And it just took that to the programmatic level and allowed faculty members from different institutions to do that at the programmatic level rather than the institutional level, and was very, very fruitful.

I love in. In a world that works with very clearly defined boxes from programs, programmatic, institution and all this, to think out of the boxes is quite a challenge. So I'm really thankful for that and for that idea. It gives some people. It gives some people some room and permission to actually say, let's be creative in that space, in the blind spot. I think that that was great. So here's Renee. Can I do one more question before you ask?

Well, I have something really connected.

Let's do that.

Oh, yeah. Because I'm taking a different direction.

Yeah. So you've talked a lot about this, this way that accreditation works where it's peer reviewed. And I think that before hearing you talk about this, I would have assumed that accreditation was a body that told us what to do and that we had to do it how they said. Can you talk a little bit about what are the benefits that we are doing it this way and that it's not, it's not top down, but that it's so collaborative.

The piece of the accreditation component that I like so much is the fact that we're able to say that there is some top down pieces. There is. There's an organization that accredits the accreditors and that organization pulls their standards from federal law. So this is kind of the way that it works in, is that the government will kind of the U.S. department of Education passes their laws about what higher education can and cannot do and what that needs to. To look like. And then that gets passed down to this other organization that accredits the accreditors, and then they kind of make policies and standards which are guidelines around what should be, what these accreditors should do. And then that kind of trickles down from that level. But the basis of participating in the accreditation process is to say that we want to do well, we want to work towards continuous improvement. And so we're going, in order to do that, we're going to participate in this peer review process to be learning about what we do well, what we don't do well, and to let with humbleness let other peers come in and look at that and review that and give us their feedback. Yeah. And report back to the.

So it is compliance to the standards that are set by our accreditor, but it's also a proving of continuous growing and learning and actually improving quality.

Yeah. I think the hope of every director of institutional effectiveness would be that the motivation for the work that we do would Always be based on continuous improvement and student improvement and supporting the students that we're trying to move through learning. And then the secondary piece is that while we're doing that, it happens to be in compliance with these organizations who help outline best practices for us.

Yeah, I like that emphasis. I, I think it's, it's important to know the priority that you have when all this. So let me, let me use your skills, your, you've done it now for, for so long, your analytical skills, to say if you were. So we're doing a service to parents of prospective students. If, if they would look at a website, they're looking at a webpage of a program or of a university. You've already given us a hint. Go and see who they're accredited by, what their stands, what you know, the reports are, they're looking at a specific program, looking at syllabi. What would you look to see in objectives on things? Where should they look to see what that program is about and how they can actually see if that program is quality or not?

Yeah, that's a great question. When you're looking at the, at a school, obviously go check their accreditation status. Are they accredited? Is their accreditation in good standing when it's renewed? It'll either be in good standing or they might have a probationary period put in place if they're not in compliance in certain areas. So being checking that out first, are they accredited? How is their accreditation standards? What does that look like? Would be a good place to start. All public organizations or universities are required to post their assessment results from their programs kind of online or their outcomes I should say are available. Student learning outcomes are available. So checking those types of metrics as well.

So student, student learning outcomes, they should be posted. People have it there. So as a parent, I would look to say, what is my, what is my child going to get out of this?

Yeah. So check the accreditation status and standing and then, yeah, start looking at the program, the learning outcomes that they list. Because every, like I was talking about earlier, there's promises that we make to our students about what they'll learn and those are articulated and captured in those student learning outcomes. Those are what the school and the faculty hold themselves accountable to teaching to in their curriculum, in the way they design their curriculum. So check that. And then beyond that, start checking some of the metrics for the school. If they have it specific to the degree program, that can be helpful. Metrics that you would want to look at is graduation rate, placement rate. Are the students able to find a job once they graduate, those types of other information can be helpful to look at as well.

So you, you mentioned earlier that part of, part of what you excel at in your job is being able to read the detail that's written in a really specific kind of policy oriented kind of way. If I was to go research these things, am I going to have to be able to read that kind of stuff in order to do this research or is it going to be displayed to me in a way that I can, I can grasp when I'm not you?

Yeah, that's a great question. Yes, the accreditation status is a really easy way to check. Are they in good standing? Are they not in good standing? If they're in good standing, then. And you can see that on the accreditor's website, like Multnomah is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. So you can go to the NWCCU's website, you can search Multnomah and you can see our letter on there of what our accreditation stands status is and it says that we're in good standing. Our accreditation has been renewed. So that's a really good place to start. The letter will also detail those accommodations and other pieces, but it does use some assessment jargon, so you'll have to kind of decipher some pieces of that. But the standing piece is just a great place to start.

There's a thumbs up though there, there's a good standing there.

Yeah. Okay. And then the other place to look, which is where a lot of our assessment data gets published, is with IPEDS on, they have a College Navigator website and on there you can look up the specific organizations and all of the student success outcomes are published on there. So you'll see the information about how many students are enrolled, what's the faculty to student ratio, what is the graduation rate. So those types of pieces will allow you to get snapshots of what the university's doing. And that can be helpful in just knowing that those are some of what the standards outline that we need to be looking at. And so it's already been looked at and put into a snapshot for you on that website.

Well, Lydia, I, I knew we're going to get tremendous value in this. In this episode, if nothing else, you, you've learned that Multnomah University is very dedicated to quality. I'm very thankful for your service here, for your tenure here at Multnomah, for the excellent, excellent work that you've done so far, and thankful to have you as a, as a A partner in crime here at Multoma and actually really accomplishing all these. But right now we're gonna move into a rapid fire session. And that is not to get to know what you do, but getting to know who Lydia is a little bit. And. And seeing. So here's what's on your bucket list. Do you have. Okay, let me start with it. Do you have a bucket list? Even if it's a virtual one in your mind? So give us one item on your bucket list.

One item on my bucket list. I'm trying to decide if I should go fun or career.

Fun, please. Fun.

Time for fun.

Sounds good. I think traveling to Hawaii is on my bucket list.

All right. Do you have any useless talents?

Oh, I have the spiritual gift of annoyance. So that is playful joking annoyance. My family experiences it more than my colleagues, so you might not have identified it.

Imagine bringing all the assessment skills at home. Imagine bringing all those assessment. What was your best purchase this year? Under $100.

Oh, best purchase. Okay. It's a milk frother. It's like a $20, $50 little milk frother and it allows me to make cappuccino style drinks at home. No way. There's coffee and extra frothy milk.

Amazon, here I come.

A little bit of self care.

What TV show or movie would you like to live in?

Oh, TV show or movie I would like to live in. Hmm. I mean, I just have to go with a classic like the Lucille Ball episodes. Like, just, Just so funny. All the funny things that happen. Sometimes I feel like I live that with kids at home.

What is the strangest thing you've ever eaten?

Oh, chicken heart.

Chicken heart.

Chicken heart.

Because you cook that up at home?

No, I traveled to Brazil and that's a delicacy in Brazil. Yeah.

Hey. All right.

Okay.

Can you tell us one story from your educational journey? Could be childhood or adolescence or college. That has just stuck with you.

Yeah, I. I keep going back and forth if I should go further back or. I think the most prominent one that stands out to me was my master's thesis. It was a really intensive writing process, or we spent almost a year kind of writing and rewriting and writing and rewriting and researching and writing and rewriting this paper. And this was the first time I had had an experience that it was more formative in terms of assessment, where you turned in something, you got a lot of feedback on that piece, and then you moved forward to the next piece, got more feedback. So it was formative and built on itself. I got Feedback at checkpoints along the way. And previously, my assignments had all been more summative. That you turned it in, you got a grade, you walk away. There's really no opportunity to do anything different. And I found that learning experience to just kind of redefine the way I appreciate education. And quite frankly, like, that's part of best practices and assessment now. And so it's a piece that I like to advocate for based on my experience. I was like, that was. I learned so much in that process that I think it's important to carry forward.

Yeah, I think that's more real to life. Right. Like, I think that's a great bridge into career. If you could change one thing about education, what would it be?

The misconception of accreditation and assessment, really, it gets a bad rap.

I don't think you're gonna say that. I didn't think it's gonna have accred.

It gets a bad rap sometimes. You know, people don't understand it. They think it's just government involvement, those types of pieces. But at the end of the day, like we've talked about today, it's about a commitment to continuous improvement and ensuring quality. So I think that would be. That's really just a perception that I would appreciate. I think it would be really cool if we could change that narrative. Yeah.

So neat to hear that you. You don't want to change accreditation, just want to change people's perspective of it.

That's really neat.

Okay. And what is something that you either learned recently or you're currently learning?

Oh, I am. Have been really challenged recently by some of Brene Brown's work and Leading with Vulnerability. So I've read it Daring to Daring greatly. And I'm just starting to read Daring to Lead and the. What I'm learning from that is just incredible. And the application it has to leading the assessment work is very applicable and it just is really challenging me in a lot of ways to lead out in vulnerability and courage and forthrightness and kind of those types of pieces. So I think that's really learning a lot about leading with vulnerability. Wow.

Lydia, we want to thank you for coming out to MU Talks. Thank you for coming on our podcast. If. If anybody wants to reach out to you, they can go to Monoma's website, find your email and ask more questions or maybe even get you their institution to help them out with. But if anybody wants to, they just can go to website.

I believe so.

Okay. Well, thank you again for coming out. Thank you for. For coming to. To our podcast, sharing all this great wisdom with us and everybody to on our next episode. I don't think it comes as a great shock to you that the views and opinions expressed on this podcast do not belong to Mono University, but to the people that are invited and are in the studio and having a great conversation. Thank you.

Sam.