Summary of Responses to NWCCU Recommendations
Topic: How has WSU responded to NWCCU recommendations over the current 7-year review cycle?
Challenge/Opportunity: WSU aims to maintain sufficient progress in all areas of institutional development and consistent with our institutional mission and strategic plan. WSU has earned commendations from NWCCU and has received recommendations that focus on improvement rather than on compliance issues. It is common for NWCCU to provide institutions with recommendations for improvement because of its continuous improvement mission.
Recent actions/outcomes: Over the course of the seven-year cycle of continuous improvement, WSU has responded effectively to topics previously requested in recommendations from the Commission and has received a commendation regarding the university’s responsiveness. Actions have included:
- Enhancement of assessment processes at all levels and in all instructional delivery modes (Standard 2.B).
- Strengthened faculty participation in assessment (Standard 2.C.5) and sustained use of assessment in decision making and strategic planning.
- Ensuring that decision-making processes are clearly communicated to inform and involve all stakeholder groups in matters for which they have direct and reasonable interest (Standards 1.B.3, 6.A.3).
- Development of a refreshed strategic plan with refined and tightly mapped objectives, outcomes, and indicators to provide the most useful information for making resource and capacity decisions (Standard 1.B.2).
- Use of information from assessments of student learning outcomes to evaluate overall mission fulfillment and inform resource and capacity decisions (Standard 1.B.2).
- The launch of the Drive to 25 initiative, which provides a set of key indicators to further focus the evaluation of mission fulfillment (Standard 1.A.2, 1.B.2).
Current/Future emphasis or next steps:
- WSU has developed the Institutional Effectiveness Council to monitor WSU’s progress against the strategic plan and Drive to 25 and provide an annual report to the community.
For more information at WSU:
NWCCU standards reference: NWCCU Standards