Apr 30, 2014 By Jacob Meyer staff Writer 4 min read

“Your degree is actually worth something if you go to an accredited institution,” Dr. Jamie Jacobs said. “It means there is an outside, independent, non-governmental entity that is verifying the degrees and that the institution is a real higher education institution. If an institution loses its accreditation it’s very hard for them to recruit students because the degree kind of isn’t worth the paper that it’s written on.”

“What we do is look through all of the things that we’re doing across the institution and we do a self-audit [to see] if we are actually doing the things we say we’re doing,” Jacobs said. “So we verify that we are performing all the services, planning for the future and fulfilling our mission in the ways that we have set out.”

To obtain student input for the self-study the university conducted four focus groups, two of which were held on April 14. Dana Baer, member of the steering committee and professor of criminal justice, Genna Steele, executive assistant to the provost, and Jacobs conducted the focus groups. 

 “My attempt was to make it as random as we could make it so we were getting representation from a broad spectrum,” Baer said. “We actually ended up with what we were looking for. It was a comprehensive composition of constituencies.”

Jacobs said a huge part of the self-study is hearing from every department at the university.

After that, the university will get back to work revising the draft to be approved by the Board of Trustees in September before officially sending it in to MSCHE. Once MSCHE has reviewed the self-study, a group from MSCHE will conduct a site visit in November. 

Jacobs said the self-study process is one that students at many universities would not be interested in, but that is not the case at Waynesburg University.