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UK Office of Adult Student Services Hosts Record Crowd at Back to School Workshop
A record 85 prospective adult students recently attended the UK Office of Adult Student
Services’ Back to School Workshop. One ofthe goals in Kentucky is to increase the number of
bachelor’s degree candidates in the workforce, and one way to do that is to reach out and find
adults who got close to finishing their degree but did not graduate. Since the partnership’s
inception nearly two years ago, 44 Project Graduate students have returned to UK to complete
their degrees. That is 44 people whose lives have changed significantly. This is a powerful
program at UK.
President Todd then asked Dr. Deanna Sellnow to give a presentation about the
reaffinnation ofthe SACS accreditation process.
E. UK Reaffinnation of SACS Accreditation Process
Dr. Sellnow presented progress to date on developing the Quality Enhancement Plan
(QEP), a core requirement for SACS reaffinnation of accreditation. The primary purpose ofthe
presentation was to infonn Trustees about SACS accreditation and to engage them in the QEP
development process.
The QEP is ". . .a carefully designed course of action that addresses a well-defined and
focused topic or issue related to enhancing student leaming.” It is a new requirement designed to
make the accreditation process less prescriptive and to give institutions more control and
flexibility, resulting in a planning initiative that is then implemented to improve student learning.
SACS reaffinnation also involves completion of a Compliance Certification report that is due
September 2012, the QEP is due January 2013. SACS review by a team of peers will take place
in spring 2013 to detennine the acceptability of the QEP, based on key criteria. To be
"acceptable” the QEP must be:
--developed through a broad-based institutional process,
--focused on student leaming and leaming outcomes,
--based on key issues emerging from assessment and aligned with the strategic plan, and
--suppo1ted appropriately to ensure institutional capability to implement, complete, and
assess it.
Examples of QEPs at other institutions addressed topics such as ethics, enhancing
leaming through advising, enhancing student-faculty engagement, and transfonning the
undergraduate experience through research.
Progress to date at UK includes: completion of a Topic Selection Plan by a pre-planning
team and implementation ofthe Topic Selection Plan in spring 2010 by a broad-based, faculty-
led team representative of all colleges and many support units across the University. The Topic
Selection Team, under the leadership of faculty co-chairs, Dr. Sellnow and Dr. Snow, is
conducting a campus-wide brainstonning session to solicit "big ideas” for a QEP topic. Next
steps include reviewing available formal and infonnal assessment data, reviewing the big ideas
in relation to assessment data, and categorizing the ideas into emergent themes. In fall 2010 the