Hocking College will see a second visit from the school’s accrediting body this year because the college did not fully meet all criteria the first time around.
Of the Higher Learning Commission’s five criteria for reaccreditation, Hocking College fully met only two of them. The college was last accredited 10 years ago and is not at risk of losing its accreditation.
The five criteria are mission and integrity; preparing for the future; student learning and effective teaching; acquisition, discovery and application of knowledge; and engagement and service.
Hocking College must draft a plan by April that includes recommendations for how to fix the problems highlighted in the commission’s preliminary accreditation report. The commission will return for a follow-up visit in November 2013 to judge whether the college has made the necessary improvements.
“Fortunately, none of the problems prompted the team to recommend sanctions or other forms of punitive action,” Hocking College President Ron Erickson said in a statement. “Nor were the problems unknown to us; the need for improvements in board governance, campus communication, operational planning, participatory decision-making and fiscal solvency are issues already at the center of our improvement efforts.”
For the mission and integrity criterion, the report cited a controversy from last year in which Erickson was fired from his position as president and then rehired three months later. The trustees fired Erickson because of an ongoing dispute with the board over control and communication within the college, according to a previous Post article.
“During the time of the termination, a public display of anger occurred,” the report states. “(The) two trustees … who opposed the rehiring of the president are no longer involved in the day-to-day activities of the Board of Trustees.”
The board rehired the president after four of the nine trustees were replaced. After the vote to reinstate Erickson, two other trustees resigned and were replaced. Only one of the current trustees has served on the board for longer than six months.
“A board governance training event is already being scheduled for the beginning of February,” said Laura Alloway, director of marketing and public relations for Hocking College. “We are hosting someone from the Association of Community College Trustees. They are going to be coming in and providing the training.”
Other problems the report addressed were in the “preparing for the future” and “student learning and effective teaching” categories. Hocking College needs to develop a “contingency plan to deal with current and potentially continuing declining state revenue,” according to the report. The college also needs to improve the quality and consistency of annual program reports.
“This was no surprise to us really,” Alloway said. “We knew these problems existed, and we’re already working on solutions to them.”
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Editor's note: This article's headline was updated to say that Hocking College failed to completely meet three accreditation criteria, rather than failing the criteria.
