Demonstrating that faculty members are appropriately prepared and qualified to teach has always been a critical part of accreditation in higher education, but it has taken on additional dimensions and become more demanding since SACS shifted its focus on faculty credentials from a broad departmental or programmatic level to the point of asking if faculty members are specifically qualified to teach each of the courses assigned to them. SACS no longer assumes that being qualified to serve on the faculty of a given department automatically qualifies someone to teach every course offered by that department.
In many respects, SACS's previous accreditation standards focused only on whether faculty members were qualified to be faculty members in the department or discipline in which they were teaching. In contrast, the new standards more pointedly look at their qualifications to effectively conduct each of the specific courses they're assigned to teach. And, SACS wants these credentials to be examined for each class and each faculty member every time the class is offered, not just at the time they're first hired or even every ten years when the institution is up for reaffirmation.
The new method SACS has devised for reviewing credentials is the Faculty Roster Form, a deceptively simple four-column form that NKU department chairs were first asked to prepare in fall 2006. Henceforth, a faculty roster will need to be prepared and submitted by each department/program in each academic term that courses are offered.
The faculty roster for each department will report:
- each faculty member's name and whether he/she is full-time or part-time;
- the course number, course title, and degree-level of each course this faculty member is teaching this term;
- the faculty member's graduate degree(s) that provided specific preparation for teaching these courses or, if she/he does not have an appropriate graduate degree for the couse(s) being taught, the total number of graduate credit hours that she/he has earned that are related to the course(s) being taught; Further discussion of faculty credentials with several frequently asked questions are included on a separate Web page.
- a narrative description of "other qualifications" for those faculty who do not have adequate academic credentials listed in the third column. This may include professional work experience, previous teaching experience, reasearch or other scholarly activity, and/or non-credit study programs. This is also included in the discussion of faculty credentials and FAQs posted elsewhere on this site.
It sounds like, and it is, a simple and straight forward form, but it requires thoughtful and thorough answers. It cannot be ignored or blown off with glib, non-substantive, or partial responses. During the June 2007 SACS Orientation meeting in Atlanta, representatives from NKU and the other institutions which are up for reaffirmation in 2009 were cautioned that 86 percent of the institutions seeking reaffirmation during 2006 (30 out of 35 institutions) were initially found to be non-compliant regarding faculty credentials. This was largely because their faculty rosters did not provide sufficient detail or adequate explanation of the qualifications their faculty members actually possessed. Although SACS found some instances in which faculty members were actually not qualified, in most cases, faculty members who who were initially believed to have questionable qualifications were judged to be acceptable when additional information and documentation were provided.
The complete and official SACS directions for the Faculty Roster Form can be found on the SACS Web site using this link.
NKU will generate its faculty rosters with Digital Measures Activity Insight software. Although the initial format in which the data is entered will not look the same as it does on the official SACS form, -- Much of it will be done using drop-down menus and check boxes. -- it will be converted and formatted into the standard SACS format by the software.
- Basic information for columns one and three of the roster form will be entered once, the first time a faculty member teaches in an academic program. It may be entered by the individual faculty member or the department's clerical staff and will remain in the system where it can be called up each subsequent term.
- In each term the faculty member teaches, the faculty member or the department's clerical staff will enter the specific course information for whatever he/she is teaching that term (essentially column two information).
- The department chair will then review this information and add column four justifications and/or additional column three information if they are needed. Once entered, this information will also remain accessible in the system and can easily be called up and reused in subsequent terms.
Due dates for submission of Faculty Roster information
Fall semester 2007 |
November 26, 2007 |
| |
Winter intersession 2007-08 and
Spring semester 2008 | March 3, 2008 |
All summer sessions 2008 | July 15, 2008 |
Fall semester 2008 | September 1, 2008 |
The unusually early deadline for fall 2008 is necessary to meet SACS's Sept. 10 submission date for NKU's Compliance Certification. After this, faculty rosters will be a regular feature of each academic term and will be due on a schedule patterned after the dates shown for fall 2007 through summer 2008. |
Click here for further discussion and FAQs about faculty credentials.
Click here to review relevant SACS standards on the Office of Curriculum, Accreditation & Assessment Web site.
