OHIO’s reaffirmation of accreditation process: What University staff need to know

The Higher Learning Commission (HLC) will visit OHIO’s campus March 24-25 to review the University as part of the ten-year cycle for reaffirmation of accreditation. Accreditation is important in ensuring a high-quality educational experience; OHIO has been continuously accredited through the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) since 1913. HLC organizes its review of institutions through five Criteria for Accreditation that cover how the University functions.

While HLC’s visit will be based on the Athens campus, reviewers will also visit the Lancaster and Eastern campuses. Staff play an important role in the University’s Comprehensive Evaluation process, and they will be invited to meetings with the peer review team to share their experiences at OHIO. Peer reviewers may ask questions linked to the five criteria or general questions about employee experiences and their work at OHIO. Additionally, the HLC’s peer team will review the documentation OHIO shared with them prior to their visit; their goal will be to validate the evidence OHIO has shared and how the University is meeting HLC criteria.

It is important to note that there are no right and wrong answers to any of the questions posed by the peer reviewers. You’re encouraged to answer their questions honestly and to the best of your ability based on experiences in your department, division, committees or other groups on campus; however, don’t be afraid to say that you do not have all the answers, either – No one is expected to know everything about OHIO. It’s equally okay to share what you feel are OHIO’s ongoing challenges along with its strengths.

Here are six areas for you to think about as you start to prepare for the HLC comprehensive evaluation on March 24-25, 2025.

1) OHIO’s Mission and Vision

When HLC peer reviewers visit campus, they will be interested in learning more about how Ohio University operates at an institutional level and across your colleges, schools and departments. Even though our day-to-day work is typically focused in one area of the University, HLC expects that employees would be generally familiar with OHIO’s mission and vision and how it connects to the work of your departments. Typical questions from peer reviewers might include asking what you know about the mission, describing the process we recently completed to review and revise the mission, and how your work supports the mission. 

 

2) Dynamic Strategy

OHIO’s Dynamic Strategy builds on OHIO's founding purpose and embraces our existing excellence. Beginning in Fall 2023, thousands of faculty, staff, students and alumni engaged in designing goals and strategies to guide our institution’s future and inform a roadmap to guide our work for the next three years. The peer review team will want to know more about this process and how we are implementing Dynamic Strategy and learn more about the ways that staff provided input, how initiatives were developed and selected, what staff know about the strategy’s progress, and how your department’s work aligns to the goals of the Dynamic Strategy. 

3) OHIO’s Quality Initiative (QI) Project

One of the facets of HLC’s Open pathway reaffirmation process features a University-selected quality initiative project meant to enhance or improve a process at OHIO. A Quality Initiative is expected to be a large, multi-year, institutional effort. In the past under HLC’s AQIP Pathway, OHIO utilized a similar project to develop a process for evaluating operations in academic support units (ASSUR). Our recent QI project focused on developing and implementing the Guarantee+ Graduation plans for all Athens and regional campuses and moving to a professional advising model.  OHIO’s Quality Initiative report and HLC’s acceptance of the report are available for review on the Accreditation Documents webpage.

During their time on campus, peer reviewers might be interested in learning more about your knowledge of the Guarantee+ Graduation plans effort, how the graduation plans are used by advisors and students, and the ways students can access advising, career services and support for experiential learning.

4) Staff Input on Departmental and Institutional Initiatives

As part of their review, the HLC peer committee is expected to want to learn how staff input is used in decision-making, particularly for employee matters and co-curricular programming. This may include questions about shared governance, how new strategies in your departments or divisions are selected and communicated, how resource allocation requests are made and funded, or the development and review of institutional policies.

Additionally, peer reviewers may ask broad questions at an institutional level alongside more granular questions about the policies and procedures within your division, department or office. Examples of this might include the ways OHIO selects and implements co-curricular programming or provides experiential learning opportunities for students across the University. 

5) Evaluating Operations to Improve Services and Programs 

As a public institution, OHIO frequently evaluates its operations and publicizes its performance related to student outcomes and finances. Many departments and divisions collect information on performance of services through the ASSUR process and use the results to make operational and strategic changes or to request additional resources. HLC peer reviewers will want to know how your division or department strives for performance improvement and ensures that services are effective. The ways that offices or departments are utilizing data to make operational changes that impact organizational outcomes, including resource allocations to improve student success, will always be of primary interest.

The HLC Peer Review team is only on site for two days. During this time, they will be seeking additional evidence that OHIO is meeting the criteria for accreditation. It’s helpful for all community members to be prepared to answer questions and to be ready to share the unique experiences and perspectives that will help the peer team develop a well-rounded overview of OHIO’s processes and commitment to student success.

Learning more and getting involved

Achieving accredited status is a time and resource-intensive process that requires a commitment to institutional effectiveness and the continuous improvement of academic quality. OHIO is committed to providing a quality education wherever, and however, its educational courses and programs are delivered. The reaffirmation process involves everyone – from faculty, staff and students to the valued stakeholders across our OHIO communities. 

Interested staff are encouraged to consider these topics and learn more about the upcoming HLC peer team visit on the Reaffirmation of Accreditation webpage for potential questions. As the HLC visit approaches, practice open forums will also be available for anyone interested in learning more about what they can expect during an HLC open forum session.

As OHIO’s reaffirmation of accreditation moves forward, we will keep you updated on the progress of our reaffirmation efforts and opportunities for the University community to share their voices and feedback via ohio.edu/provost/accreditation/reaffirmation.