Fort Lewis College is celebrating the kickoff of reaccreditation, a process that colleges and universities go through every 10 years to maintain their higher education bona fides.
Actual reaccreditation is still some way off: Officials from the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, one of six regional accrediting bodies, are scheduled to visit campus in 2015, when they will conduct a full evaluation of the college’s practices.
But on Thursday, FLC was taking the bull by the horns, throwing an “Accreditation Launch Party” in the Student Union Ballroom, where about 100 students and teachers grazed on cheese, fruits, crackers, vegetables, dip, lemon bars, brownies and meatballs as the FLC pep band played.
FLC spokesman Mitch Davis wrote in an email that neither the festivities nor the bureaucratic gear-up for accreditation were premature.
“The process is so important, involved and complex that we’re starting now,” Davis wrote.
FLC Provost Barbara Morris acknowledged that it was rare for institutions to lose their accreditation, and said she anticipated FLC would not only be reaccredited, but that Higher Learning Commission officials would reaccredit it with “flying colors.”
But Morris said reaccreditation was nonetheless deeply important to FLC’s academic credibility and to its brand as the only public liberal arts college in the state.
“Symbolically, it is a very big deal for colleges and universities,” Morris said, likening the necessity of FLC’s reaccreditation to a doctor keeping a medicine practice or a lawyer maintaining standing with the Colorado Bar Association.
She said getting reaccredited was a federal guarantee of quality that was critical to FLC’s future because the landscape of higher education is changing. Students increasingly opt to enroll in online college, which, though cheap, often offers educations of erratic or untested quality.
Morris said reaccreditation was also necessary for FLC, as it makes the college eligible for federal money, including research grants, student grants and student loans.
Speaking at the reaccreditation launch party, FLC student body President Dylan Leigh implored his classmates to get involved in the reaccreditation effort.
He ended his remarks by quoting Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.
“The real university, (Phaedrus) said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real university is a state of mind. ... It’s a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real university. The real university is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself.”
The audience cheered.
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
