For the past year, Iona College has been going through an extensive program of Middle States re-accreditation. On Oct. 1, the college held a Town Hall meeting to update the community on the process and to discuss what will happen as Iona moves from the first phase into the second phase of the accreditation process.

Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs Brian Nickerson led the town hall discussing the completed steps of the re-accreditation process.

So far, task forces have been organized to go over the Fourteen Standards of Excellence and give reports to the Steering Committee. The Steering Committee went over the reports, gave feedback and then allowed the Task Forces to revise the reports once again.

These reports have been posted for community review on the Iona website and sent to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the group that is responsible for accrediting Iona College.

In the next few months, there will be open forums to continue to provide information for the Iona community, Nickerson explained.

There will be another Town Hall open to the entire Iona community on Tuesday, Oct. 2 and similar meetings with the Faculty Senate, Student Government Association and the Staff and Administrative Council.

The purpose of all of these meetings is to keep the community aware of what is going on in the process, to answer any questions and to receive the ever-important feedback that can be incorporated into the final draft of the self study report. There is an online discussion about the report.

“I’m not comfortable that we have a strong report,” Nickerson said, but he expressed optimism that continuing community feedback and other efforts will bring it up from what he called “solid.”

After explaining what part of the process Iona is at presently, Nickerson moved on to discuss what factors played into accreditation. These factors include assessment, the Fourteen Standards of Excellence and the political pressures put on the members of accreditation associations by both political parties and the United States Department of Education. All of these factors play a part in making accreditation mean something rather than just being a matter of going through the motions every five years.

The Task Force findings were also disclosed as each of these Task Forces was assigned a few of the Fourteen Standards of Excellence that Middle States sets down as the criteria for re-accreditation. Many of these findings aligned with goals of the Strategic Planning that also took place last year, as a separate, but often overlapping, action. The findings often stress the need for more integration and communication between different departments and areas of the College to improve overall performance.

There will be another Town Hall meeting open to the community tomorrow, Oct. 2 at 12:00PM in Romita Auditorium.