CES awarded accreditation, hailed by reviewers for visionary programs

The College of Educational Studies
received full accreditation for all seven of their credential programs for the maximum period of seven years from the Sacramento-based Commission on Accreditation (COA) on March 18.  This concludes a series of events that culminated with the
California Commission on Teacher Credentialing
(CCTC) visiting the CES in early February.

At the conclusion of the CCTC visit, the 11-member review team made a unanimous recommendation to the COA for full accreditation. Within the report, the CCTC team wrote “What brings all these individuals together as a “unit” is a unified vision of education as the means for changing the world—a vision to which every member is fully and deeply committed.”

College of Educational Studies Dean Don Cardinal praised the college’s faculty and staff for their work and the extraordinary effort by Dianne Ferguson, Ph.D., director of Program Improvement and Accreditation.

 “I am so proud of our faculty, staff and students and so appreciative of the support we received from offices and departments across the university. This was truly a team effort,” Dean Cardinal said.

 This is the first time an institution has attempted to not use the commission’s program document approach. The CES developed a proprietary system called Program Improvement System for the CES (PISCES) which now serves as the primary program improvement system for seven state credential accreditations, four national accreditations, WASC and Chapman’s own program review system.

It is a bold approach but as Dean Cardinal suggests, “We are better now than we were last year and we will be better next year than we are today. Our PISCES is the vehicle that allows for us to test our new ideas, keeping what is demonstrated to work and discarding the less effective features of our program. This ensures the optimal use of our energies toward the path toward excellence.”