Accreditation A Priority at K-State at All Levels

Reprinted Courtesy of K-State Media Relations and Marketing

From the institutional level to individual programs and services, achieving and renewing accreditation is a priority and an ongoing process at Kansas State University, according to M. Duane Nellis, provost and senior vice president.

“Whether it is the university as a whole, our academic programs or some of the key services we offer our students, accreditation is vital in helping K-State achieve the goal of becoming one of the nation’s top 10 land-grant universities,” Nellis said. “Accreditation is such an important validation of the quality of education we offer our students.
It also is an indicator of the outstanding quality of teaching at K-State.”

Accreditation is vital in the recruitment of outstanding students and faculty, said Pat Bosco, K-State vice president for student life and dean of students.

“When we talk about accreditation, some people might think of it as icing on the cake; I think of it as a basic ingredient of a great university,” Bosco said. “It impacts the quality of student we attract to the university, as well as the faculty who come from all over the country and the world to teach here because we are accredited.”

Bosco said the quality of students K-State attracts each year is evidenced by the fact that the university leads the nation among all state universities in the number of students who have received the prestigious Truman and Goldwater scholarships.

Exceeding accreditation standards at every level is K-State’s goal, Nellis said. “Failure is never an option. Once accreditation is earned or renewed, our faculty and staff know they must continue with assessment efforts to ensure we never lag behind any standard for quality.”

As an institution, K-State is accredited every 10 years through the Higher Learning Commission, North Central Region. But many individual programs and some services also can be accredited.

“Most of the accreditation at K-State focuses on our professional programs,” Nellis said.

“For example, the College of Business of Administration, College of Architecture, Planning and Design, and College of Engineering all offer programs that have been highly scrutinized and have been accredited through national accrediting bodies,” he said. “There are also specialized or professional programs in several of our colleges, such as early childhood education and communication sciences and disorders in the College of Human Ecology and journalism and social work in the College of Arts and Sciences, that do carry accreditation.”

“Accreditation is important to our program because only graduates from accredited programs can obtain professional engineering licenses to practice engineering,” said Mo Hosni, head of K-State’s department of mechanical and nuclear engineering. “The mechanical engineering program is reaccredited every six years by ABET, the recognized accrediting body for college and university programs in applied science, computing, engineering and technology.”

However, not every academic program at K-State can be accredited because some academic fields simply do not have an accrediting body, Nellis said. That lack of accreditation should never be taken as a sign of a lack of quality or a failure of the program to meet certain standards, he said.

“For example, our biology programs, physics program and our geography program are not accredited, but that doesn’t mean these programs are not of substantial quality. In fact, these programs rank among the nation’s best,” he said. “It doesn’t require accreditation for our programs to be among the elite nationally; accreditation doesn’t even exist for biology and physics at any major university.”

“The excellence of our biology programs is backed up by the numbers,” Bosco said. “Last year, 84 percent of K-State’s premed students were accepted into medical school, while 94 percent of our pre-dentistry students were accepted into dental school — that’s almost double the national average. It shows how well a K-State education prepares students for professional health schools.”

While there is no accrediting body for physics, Nellis said there is no doubt of the quality of K-State’s physics program. “K-State’s department of physics has had two CASE/Carnegie National Professors of the Year for doctoral institutions: Chris Sorenson, who is the current National Professor of the Year, and Dean Zollman, university distinguished professor of physics and head of the department, who received the honor in 1996. It shows the standards for teaching physics at K-State rank at the highest national level.”

It’s not just academic programs that can boast of accreditation at K-State. Lafene Health Center has been continuously accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations since 1968.

In addition, many K-State faculty members, such as Hosni, are or have been active in setting accreditation standards in their disciplines.

“We value our ABET accreditation and play an active role in its support,” said Hosni, who is an ABET evaluator for mechanical engineering programs. He is an executive member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Committee on Engineering Accreditation that develops mechanical engineering accreditation criteria and trains ABET evaluators. Hosni has done accreditation visits both nationally and internationally.

Even K-State students are involved with helping to set accreditation standards nationally. Katie Hamm, senior in dietetics, Shawnee, is an alternate student representative to the National Dietetics Accrediting Commission.

For more information, contact:
Duane Nellis, 785-532-6224
Pat Bosco, 785-532-6237