Mid-Cycle Evaluation Report

Dear Faculty and Staff,

As mentioned in my previous welcome email, this year ISU is undergoing its mid-cycle review with our accreditor the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU). I’m writing today to let you know that the Planning and Institutional Effectiveness Steering Committee, in collaboration with the Office of Academic Affairs and the Office of the President, recently submitted ISU's Mid-Cycle Self-Evaluation Report. 

This document, which institutions submit to the NWCCU at the mid-point of their seven-year accreditation cycle, provides the opportunity for us to evaluate our student achievement and programmatic assessment efforts as well as our path forward for continuous quality improvement. For ISU, our Mid-Cycle Self-Evaluation Report also responds to the two NWCCU recommendations that we received as part of our 2021 Year Seven Peer-Evaluation Report. Specifically, the NWCCU recommended that ISU develop a more aspirational strategic plan and also consistently disaggregate student achievement indicators by various demographic categories. Our Mid-Cycle Report details ISU successful responses to these recommendations.

If interested, I encourage you to peruse this document and become familiar with its major findings and proposed actions and initiatives. On October 14-15, an NWCCU Peer-Evaluation Team will be coming to campus for our mid-cycle accreditation visit. In preparation for this visit, Academic Affairs will, over the next couple of months, be providing summaries of key sections of the Mid-Cycle Self-Evaluation Report, including recent findings on student achievement as well as ISU's plans for moving forward. In addition, Academic Affairs will be hosting a town hall on Tuesday, October 1st, from 3-4pm in order to provide an opportunity for the campus community to ask questions and gain further insight and understanding into our accreditation processes.

There is much in this report to be proud of, and I’m grateful for the significant efforts on the part of our faculty that have made the successes detailed here a reality.  I look forward to chatting more about this report and those efforts in the near future.

Adam