For the entire duration of the Higher Learning Commission’s (HLC) decennial accreditation visit on Monday and Tuesday, classes were out of session and campus was essentially shut down due to weather.
However, according to associate provost Dr. Marty Spears, the visit went well despite the weather. Because of the snow days, students, staff and faculty were not required to be on campus or at any sessions, but many people made an effort to attend meetings with the HLC in order to assist with the evaluation and accreditation process.
Spears said the schedule was adjusted slightly and members of the HLC were not able to attend chapel.
At a student session at 2 p.m. on Monday, the five visiting members of the HLC asked questions regarding subjects such as technology, food, housing, recreation, curfew, intramurals and job placement after graduation. Students responded with a majority of positive comments.
Senior Julia Copeland attended the meeting and said she initially went because she was curious about what the team would ask and then was glad she could help leave a good impression with the HLC visitors.
“Being a senior, I’ve loved the past four years at Harding and believe in what they stand for,” Copeland said. “I was hoping that maybe some of my input would help validate why Harding is so important and what makes it different than the rest. It was a great meeting … It was clear that I’m definitely not the only one who’s proud of my school.”
According to team member Renee Aitken, the purpose of the HLC’s visit was to ask questions regarding the Assurance Argument that the university has already compiled and submitted. The document “is where the institution provides a narrative that makes the case that the institution meets the Criteria for Accreditation,” according to the HLC website.
“We have questions about everything, but that’s not unusual,” Aitken said. “This is a peer review process and it’s always a positive process.”
Reggies Wenyika, the only visiting HLC member from a private Christian institution, went and talked to various restaurants in the Searcy area on Sunday night and said what most impressed him about the university is the strong community.
“The entire city is behind Harding,” Wenyika said. “Everyone has good things to say and that is to be commended.”
Some of the topics addressed in the 112-page Assurance Argument include that, “The education offered by Harding recognizes the human and cultural diversity of the world in which students live and work” and that “Harding evaluates the success of its graduates.” For each statement that the university presented the document provided information and statistics to back it up. The HLC visit was an opportunity for committee members to follow up with and investigate this information.
One area that Spears said the committee was particularly interested in was the assessment of student learning, but this was not a surprise to him
“It’s so important and we do address it but a constant theme that came out in a lot of their questioning was assessment of student learning,” Spears said. “It was nice that we had such a good turnout of our faculty because they would talk about specific ways …different departments were talking about the capstone courses that their seniors participate in and how they use rubrics to assess whether the students were meeting criteria that were expected of them. It was very important to have the faculty there talking that talk to make it clear that we do emphasize that here.”
The university will not receive an official written response from the HLC for another four weeks. However, Spears is not worried about what they will say. He said he knows that there is going to be room for improvement, but that is normal because universities hold themselves to a high standard.
“These things are difficult to go through because a team of people comes in and they have been given a document to read ahead of time and they’re able to spot anything they think might be a potential weakness,” Spears said.
“They’re coming to campus to ask questions about those things so it’s kind of a hard thing to go through, but it’s very healthy.”
Spears said that overall, he feels good about the visit and the process. He believes that the team was impressed with many aspects of the university.
“We talk the talk about assessment with our faculty and students and improving and as a university we have to walk the walk,” Spears said. “I think it was a really positive experience.”
