Saturday, March 28, 2009

President Rodriguez's Comments on Probation @ SJDC

Good afternoon everyone,

On February 6th I received notification from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges that they have placed Delta College on probation. Additionally, the Commission is asking us to provide a second report by March 15, 2009.

As you know, the college has been on warning status since June of 2008. Since that time, we have accomplished a great deal toward addressing the recommendations provided to us by the Commission. We provided evidence of this continuing work to the Commission in the form of a follow-up report dated October 21, 2008. Being placed on probation was clearly not the result that we hoped for or expected for our efforts. However, that work did have some positive results. That is, the Commission has now reduced the number of recommendations on which we have to report from eleven down to six. Without downplaying the significance of the remaining recommendations, the good news is that we have been consistently working on these recommendations since we submitted the last report. This does not mean that there is not work to be done. There is a lot yet to be done and we will have to redouble our efforts to get it done. We will have to make this our top priority and marshal our resources to make improvements that remedy our deficiencies and that satisfy the Commission.

It is of little solace that we have plenty of company across the state. A number of colleges are already on warning, probation, or show cause status and a number of others have just been placed into those categories. There is a general consensus across the community colleges that the Commission is taking a hard line on colleges that deviate from the accreditation standards and recommendations. There are a number of reason posited for this change. Among these are pressure from the federal government for greater accountability and to bring our colleges in line with the standards imposed by the other major accrediting agencies. Whatever the reason for this change might be, it is not really of concern at this point. Our task now is to focus on how to fully comply with the remaining six recommendations and to change our status so that we are not on the negative list. As one step in that direction, I will be speaking with Dr. Beno, the president of the Commission,this afternoon to get more specific information about the remaining recommendations and the Commission action.

Next week we will begin the task of reconvening the accreditation task force to help resolve the remaining issues. Our accreditation liaison officer, Dr. Hart, will be sending out information about that process. To jump start that work, I have attached the letter from the Commission and the team report. Please take the time to read both documents. In the days ahead, we will all need to work together as we aggressively respond to the Commission's recommendations. To do so, everyone needs to be fully informed.

Raul