The Chatham University community should expect to see some visitors on campus from March 8-11, as the institution undergoes the accreditation process. Occurring every 10 years, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) will send seven representatives to campus to evaluate University policies, procedures and processes.
While accreditation is a very large and important process, students should not expect to be greatly impacted by the evaluator’s visit. Community members may see some new faces, but evaluators will spend the majority of their time meeting with the President’s leadership team.
Vice President for Academic Affairs, Provost, and Accreditation Liaison Matt Redinger sent an email to the Chatham community on Feb. 24 detailing this process.
Chatham was last accredited in 2017. Now, creditors will return to campus in order to hold the University to its own standards, as defined by the 2025 Self-Study and Chatham’s mission.
“The creditors are basically holding institutions accountable for doing what it is they say they do,” Redinger stated.
Leading up to the creditor’s visit, working groups of Chatham staff and faculty are formed, made up of those who have direct expertise within the areas they are assigned.
“These working groups are comprised of five to seven faculty and staff members (plus a Trustee representative) whose roles at Chatham make them the best folks to work on the standard that they are studying,” states the email.
The working groups examine how the University lives up to the seven standards, as defined below.
Standard I: Mission and goals
Standard II: Ethics and integrity
Standard III: Design and delivery of the student learning experience
Standard IV: Support of the student experience
Standard V: Educational effectiveness assessment
Standard VI: Planning, resources and institutional improvement
Standard VII: Governance, leadership and administration
Redinger acknowledged that changes being made by the Trump administration are actively altering what it means to be accredited.
“This is a really interesting time for accreditation because the Trump administration is moving to undo big, big elements of accreditation as we know it. They want to move accreditation agencies out of control of the U.S. Department of Education,” Redinger said in an interview.
Accreditation allows for federal funding for an institution, but it also has extremely critical reputational impacts.
“The government wants to separate accreditation and specifically the federal financial aid resources. People who have seen the value of accreditation are up in arms. It’s very controversial. And what it’s going to be going forward, we have no idea,” he said.
While these changes have a more direct impact on larger institutions because they have more funding, some repercussions may trickle down given enough time.
“Ultimately, those kinds of decisions will come back. Small institutions will ultimately end up having to bear the consequences of all of this stuff,” Redinger said.
MSCHE is one of seven institutional recruiting agencies. Up until 2020, accreditation agencies were geographically identified and responsible for each institution within their territory. These agencies are no longer assigned a specific area, but rather colleges and universities can come to a chosen agency, as per the U.S. Department of Education. Chatham is still continuing with MSCHE.
At the end of the accreditation process, creditors will leave recommendations to the University. Redinger noted that these recommendations are regarded as mandates.
“We’ll probably get a couple of recommendations, and recommendations from a creditor are not really recommendations,” he said. “Recommendation means something good for you to do. Recommendation for accreditation purposes is, ‘this is what you got to do.’”
During the visit, creditors will meet with the President’s leadership team, but also aim to hear from a variety of voices.
“I just want to make sure that they do hear from multiple voices because we have a great story to tell here and I am so excited to be at Chatham. The things we are doing and the things that we are getting ready to do, it’s just this is the place to be,” Redinger said.
