A Culture of Continuous Improvement

The culture of accreditation, and certainly the culture of the Southern Association, is a commitment to continuous improvement. We don't expect to be perfect, but we do expect to know what "good academic practices" are, to strive to implement them at every point in the institution, and to be honest about the degree to which we have achieved our goals.

The first principle of accreditation is institutional integrity. That means we are not trying to cut corners or let deficiencies slide, let alone cheat in our commitment to our mission and goals. We are committed to doing the best we can and to being honest about it.

In fact, a culture of continuous improvement admits that we are not perfect, demonstrates that we know what good academic practices are, and seeks to improve whenever and wherever possible. To do so, we are also committed to researching and assessing our outcomes to honestly determine how we are doing. After we conduct a thorough assessment, we will draw conclusions that will help us do better, and we will develop a plan to improve. Then we will agree on specific actions steps and assign specific people to be responsible for those steps. In the end, we will assess how well we did with those action steps and plan to make further improvements. Etc., etc.

This process is significantly different from my former context in Christian ministry. I certainly did my best to plan, but the process was not always that systematic. Instead of looking for ways to improve I'm afraid it was more often a matter of "spinning" the truth to look as good as possible. In fact, we would refer to this process as "evangelastically speaking." In higher education it is not about looking good, it is about finding ways to continuously improve.