Compliance Report Preparation

Notes from the Coker College SACS Liaison

Spring 2002. Near the end of the spring semester of 2002, President Jim Daniels appointed me to be the SACS liaison and gave me the task of providing leadership in the reaffirmation process. My boss, Ron Carter, who is the Provost, and I put together a committee structure to tackle the sections of the Principles. We had not yet been to a SACS orientation on the new process, so we modeled our efforts on the familiar self-study process. I wrote a "self-study" manual [356] with a timeline to completion based on our incomplete knowledge.

Summer 2002. Upon discovering that electronic submission was an option, we decided to pursue creating an electronic document. After consulting with the librarians, I wrote the code for the online archive, now known as SQUID. I thought QED (Quality Enhancement Documentation) would have been a better acronym, but thought it would be too easily confused with QEP, which was on the horizon. SQUID was up and running before the end of the summer. It would have been impossible to prepare this report without it. The archive would have been created even if we hadn't been next in line for reaccreditation, but it might not have been so readily adopted by the college community. We began regular meetings of the reaccreditation leadership team.

Fall 2002-Spring 2003 There was a college-wide "kick-off" meeting in September, launching the committees into their work. After attending meetings in Orlando and Atlanta and San Antonio, I began to get a clue that the process had changed significantly since my experience at Coker in 1994-5, but it was too late to reformulate our efforts for that year (2002-3). The committees made their final reports (with a couple of exceptions) in the Fall of 2003. From there, we adopted the ideas from the new process, asking offices and departments directly for information without working as much through the 'self-study' committees. This was a vast improvement, and we made rapid progress in refining sections. Without the specific 'must' and 'should' statements present in the Criteria, the committees didn't have enough structure to keep them confident that they were proceeding correctly. This was complicated by the fact that none of us knew exactly what the new standards meant, especially since the existing reports (from the pilot institutions) were secured like the gold in Fort Knox. This changed sometime around the Summer of 2003. Or at least that's when we noticed we could get to ETSU's material, which became a valuable example.

Fall 2003 The committees gave their (more or less) final reports. These were Word documents unsuitable for electronic publication, and had lots of holes where supporting documentation was supposed to go. By mounting an Attila the Hun-type campaign, I was able to get SQUID incorporated into the local lexicon, both as a noun and (more importantly) as a verb. It was necessary to conjugate the word, it being a verb now, and hence to squid and squidded were born. So squidding began in earnest, providing the essential documentation for the compliance report. Guidelines for electronic submission were published on the SACS web site. Some of the suggestions came too late to be of use. That's why this report doesn't look exactly like the model given, East Tennessee State's report.

Our leadership team attended the SACS meeting in Nashville that December, and got a lot of useful information, including the fact that the definitive version of the Principles would be published at the end of January, which would include new numbering for all the sections. I began to fret, because I had began to realize the problem with the new process, viz., preparing a report of this complexity is a whole job by itself. To do that and simultaneously ensure that the content was accurate and complete was too much. I enlisted the help of four other faculty members to help ensure that the product was precise and comprehensive. Frankly, though, there needs to be a dedicated "technical director"on the leadership team if electronic publication is to be done right.

Credential checking has been handled by the assistant dean, who often handles adjunct assignments. She arranged for external reviews of the credentials to ensure that our interpretation was the correct one. I also made phone calls to the Southern Association to verify a few questions I had on credentials. We discovered the extent of problem in the Business program, and the provost began working toward a solution.

Spring 2004 We got new copiers in January, which allowed us to scan paper documents into PDF form much more quickly. Editing and fact-checking proceeded. Offices finally gave up the last of the documents I had requested, so that the unit descriptions linked from the org chart could be finished. I hired a programmer to help convert documents from their native formats into PDF and HTML so that they would be accessible to readers of the report. A handful of key faculty members volunteered their time to help edit sections. At least two new versions of the Principles has been published in the last month. I worked like mad to get the section changes done. External and internal reviewers are sending lots of changes my way. Each vice president got a check sheet to initial for the sections they 'own', signing off on the content. I got a lot of good feedback that way. My white board is covered with a diagram showing how to put the electronic report together in 13 easy steps:

Our external consultant who previewed the draft report had a lot of useful comments. A LOT of useful comments. So I'm scrambling a bit to fix things. The editing team works like magic. I discovered that getting everyone together in the same room, and dividing up the sections is not only efficient, it's fun. I did all the final editing myself, checking facts and checking facts... It goes in the mail tomorrow. I have a whole lot of thank-you letters to write to the wonderful folks here. After I sleep for three days.

David A. Eubanks, SACS Liaison