Accreditation
Accreditation is critical component of college management that needs to be at the center of everything you do. Develop a culture of evidence and continuous improvement that positions your college to earn initial accreditation or maintain continued accreditation with regional, national, or programmatic accreditors. College Matters serves as an external reviewer, consultant, and objective facilitator to your self-study process. Schools seeking initial accreditation will benefit from the years of accreditation experience of the College Matters team. From the very first contact with your selected accrediting body through your self-study and subsequent reviews, College Matters can provide insight and objective feedback to ensure the process is both thorough and expedient. Regardless of whether your choice is regional, national, or specialized (programmatic) accreditation, the best process is inclusive of all college constituencies and provides an ongoing model of continuous improvement. From your initial decision to become accredited, College Matters can help you decide which accrediting agency is best for your college, plan an effective self-study that is campus driven, serve as an objective reviewer of your institutional self-study, evaluate your school’s operations to ensure you meet (or exceed) accreditation standards, and work with your campus team to respond to accreditation inquiries, monitoring reports, show cause orders, or evaluator site visits.

Institutional Effectiveness
Every accrediting body addresses the question of assessing institutional effectiveness—essentially, the question of how the institution knows how well it is doing what it does. This critical element of effective school management centers on the process of documented continuous improvement. Each of the areas addressed by an accrediting agency’s standards of accreditation must be assessed and evaluated to determine how effectively the institution is executing its planning and delivery in all key operational areas. Reviewing an institution’s self-study allows College Matters to help your institution improve its approach to institutional effectiveness.

Academics
Academics is the central performance area around which higher education institutions operate. This area includes program and portfolio design, delivery and assessment methodology, academic support services (i.e. library, learning centers, writing labs), and effectiveness measurements that include retention, graduation, and placement rates beyond the classroom experience. Academic support systems, curriculum review, and new program development are the critical areas of managing the academics in any institution. A systematic plan for each of these components will ensure a high quality academic experience and foster learning communities and life-long learning for students and faculty. College Matters guides your faculty as they develop systems for assessing learning objectives, developing and reviewing programs and curricular content, and developing their teaching techniques. From program design to career services, College Matters works with your campus management team to ensure a high-quality academic experience that increases student retention.