The NWCCU accreditation process is a seven year cycle which consists of self-studies, external reviewers, and campus visits. Reports are submitted in Year 3, Year 6, and Year 7. We just submitted our Year 6 report on September 15, 2021 and will submit our Year 7 report in September of 2022.

Standards: The NWCCU changed their standards and the reporting schedule effective 2020. There are now two standards, down from five.

• Standard 1 relates to institutional effectiveness and mission fulfillment. This includes student learning and student achievement.

• Standard 2 relates to PSU policies, procedures, and review of our publicly available annual audited financial reports.

Reports: Effective 2020, the reporting schedule changed slightly by removing the Year 1 report and creating the Year 6 report. Previously, the information requested under the old Year 7, included all info from the new Year 6 report and the Year 7 report. They changed this to make the project more manageable for the schools. Year 7 reports used to be several hundred pages in length.

• The Year 3 Mid-Cycle Report relates to Standard 1 and has two reviewers who come to campus and provide feedback on how we can improve before our Year 7 Mission Fulfilment and Institutional Effectiveness report. The Mid-Cycle Evaluation is intended to be a formative evaluation and includes a campus visit.

• The Year 6 report focuses on Standard 2, policies, procedures, and includes review of our publicly available audited financial reports. There is no campus visit for the Year 6 report.

• The Year 7 report examines our process for determining mission fulfilment and institutional effectiveness. Part of this report is to provide student success data disaggregated by demographic and presented with benchmarks and comparisons with our comparator schools. The NWCCU is keen to see our efforts on reducing equity gaps. The Year 7 review includes a campus visit.

• Ad hoc reports can also be requested if they want to see evidence of our progress in between the prescribed reports.

PSU submitted our last Year 7 report in 2015. This chart provides a timeline of the subsequent reports and the reports that will be due in the future. Recommendation 2 from the 2015 Year 7 report relates to our assessment of program level learning outcomes and how we were not in compliance. The issue is that based on their campus visit, the reviewers found that not all programs were assessing program level learning outcomes. In the 2022 Year 7 report, we expect to indicate that all programs are now assessing program level student learning outcomes.

In our recently submitted Year 6 report, we updated our mission fulfillment indicators to focus on the following areas: Student Success using the Students First dashboard, Equity using the Equity Scorecard, Financial Sustainability, and Community Engagement. The Year 7 report will use indicators in these areas to assess mission fulfillment.

Below is a table showing the reports and NWCCU Response to the report.

If you have additional questions about the accreditation process please feel free to reach out to

Brian Sandlin / Accreditation and Compliance Coordinator /Office of Academic Affairs

bsandlin@pdx.edu