By Corinne Layton
Accreditation Steering Committee Co-Chair
In the December Accreditation Update it was reported that SDCE's Self-Study was reviewed and approved by the SDCCD Board of Trustees. During the month of January the Self-Study Report will be sent to the WASC Accrediting Commission. Our primary focus now is preparing for the Accreditation Site Visits that will take place March 13-16. With the Site Visits only two months away, we know that everyone has a lot of questions including the following:
- Who will be on the visiting team?
- What kind of questions will the team ask?
- How can faculty best prepare for the Site Visits?
- Will the team be visiting my class?
- How will we involve Classified Staff, students and the community?
To help prepare for the Site Visits, we encourage everyone to attend the SDCE 2017 Flex Institutional Day event on Tuesday, January 31, 2017 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at ECC in the Theatre. As part of the program there will be an update on Accreditation followed by an interactive activity “OMG! What if they ask me a question?” We will then break into campus-based groups to further prepare for the Accreditation Site Visits. In addition, at the individual program meetings in the afternoon we will discuss program-specific plans to prepare for the Site Visits. We hope these flex activities will be very informative and develop participants’ self-confidence in the Accreditation process. Faculty can pre-register for flex credit for the Institutional meeting and their individual program meeting on the flex calendar.
In addition to the flex events, the following showcase rooms and common areas will highlight SDCE programs and unique features of each campus:
- ABE/High School: ECC
- Business Information Technology: North City
- Counseling and Student Services; DSPS: ECC
- Career Technical Education: ECC
- Emeritus and Parenting: CE Mesa
- ESL: Mid-City and North City Miramar
- Healthcare Careers: Cesar Chavez
- Hospitality and Consumer Sciences: West City
If you're interested in participating on a work group to showcase your program and/or campus, please contact Accreditation Steering Committee Co-Chair Corinne Layton (clayton@sdccd.edu) or Dr. Barbara Pongsrikul (bpongsri@sdccd.edu).