What distinguishes a college degree from a certificate of completion is the assurance that the institution granting it meets externally validated standards of educational quality. That assurance is accreditation — and it is, in a meaningful sense, the foundational promise that higher education makes to students, employers, policymakers, and the public. For something so central to what we do, it is remarkable how many faculty members and even administrators move through entire careers without ever engaging seriously with how it works, what it requires, or what it is actually for.
I did not have that experience. I was exposed to accreditation work early in my career at Fort Hays State University, at a moment when the institution was deeply invested in the Academic Quality Improvement Project framework of the Higher Learning Commission — a continuous improvement model that treats institutional quality not as a fixed credential to be renewed on a schedule but as an ongoing organizational practice. That early exposure shaped how I think about institutional effectiveness, assessment, and the relationship between external accountability and internal culture.
My HLC work went well beyond campus participation. I served as a Systems Portfolio reviewer and team member beginning in 2008, was appointed Team Lead in Fall 2013 and Summer 2014, and served as Comprehensive Quality Review Site Visit Team Lead in November 2015 — a role that placed me in the position of evaluating another institution's entire academic and administrative operation against HLC standards and leading the team responsible for that judgment. I was also the AQIP Site Visit Coordinator at Fort Hays State University in December 2014, managing the institution's own review from the inside while simultaneously serving as an external reviewer for peer institutions.
Most significantly, I was the lead writer of FHSU's AQIP Systems Portfolio in the 2014 cycle — the comprehensive self-study document that serves as the primary evidence base for an institution's reaffirmation of accreditation. Writing that document is an exercise in institutional self-knowledge. It requires synthesizing evidence from across every unit of the university, identifying strengths and improvement opportunities honestly, and constructing a narrative of institutional quality that will withstand scrutiny from external reviewers who have seen many such documents and know how to distinguish genuine quality culture from performative compliance.
That experience — writing the portfolio, coordinating the site visit, and simultaneously serving as an external reviewer for peer institutions — gave me a 360-degree view of the accreditation process that is genuinely uncommon. I understand it from the inside as an institutional leader and from the outside as a peer reviewer, and that dual perspective has made me a more effective advocate for authentic quality improvement rather than compliance theater.
When I joined the University of West Georgia in 2017, I was nominated for and accepted onto the Peer Review Corps of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges — the regional accrediting body for institutions across the South and Southwest. I have been an active SACS-COC peer reviewer since December 2018, applying the same external evaluative lens to institutions operating under a different accreditation framework and in the process deepening my understanding of how different accrediting bodies approach the core questions of educational quality, institutional integrity, and continuous improvement.
SACS-COC and HLC operate with meaningfully different models — SACS uses a compliance-and-quality enhancement framework while HLC's AQIP pathway emphasizes continuous improvement cycles — and having worked substantively within both has given me a comparative perspective that informs how I think about institutional quality at the administrative level. Accreditation is not one thing. It is a family of related commitments to evidence-based self-evaluation, and understanding its variations makes you a better institutional leader.
At the program level, I led the successful renewal of NASPAA accreditation for the Master of Public Administration program at the University of West Georgia — an experience that required translating institution-wide accreditation thinking into the specific standards of a discipline-based accrediting body focused on public affairs education. NASPAA accreditation is a meaningful professional credential for an MPA program, and maintaining it required building assessment infrastructure, documenting learning outcomes, and demonstrating the kind of continuous programmatic improvement that accreditors expect to see across review cycles.
The deeper value of extensive accreditation experience for an academic administrator is not procedural — it is not simply knowing which forms to file or which standards apply. It is the habit of mind that sustained accreditation work develops: a disposition toward evidence, a tolerance for honest self-assessment, and an understanding that institutional quality is not an achievement but a practice. The best accreditation work I have been involved in has not been about satisfying an external requirement. It has been about giving an institution a structured opportunity to ask hard questions about whether it is actually doing what it says it does, and to build the systems that close the gap when the answer is no.
That disposition — toward honest evidence, structured improvement, and institutional accountability — is one I carry into every leadership role I hold.
2018-Present
April-August 2016
Served as HLC primary communication and coordinating liaison
Convened Council of Institutional Effectiveness, FHSU's primary body focused on quaity management, assessment, and data analysis for continuous improvement and accreditation reporting
December 2014
Liaised with HLC Site Visit team during their on-the-ground accreditation visit and review
April-September 2014.
Served as initial organizer and final writer of HLC AQIP re-accreditation portfolio. AQIP was HLC's innovative data-driven pathway to accreditation and reaccreditation.
Provided feedback to departments and programs on data
Advised departments and programs in innovative ways to collect data and to close the loop back as diagnostic input for improvement
· Team Lead for accreditation site visits
· Team Lead for accreditation portfolio reviews
· Team Member for accreditation portfolio reviews