After receiving a warning from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) this past summer, the Nicholls faculty has begun taking extra precautions in the way it records and collects data to avoid future warnings.
Renee Hicks, executive director of planning and institutional effectiveness at Nicholls, has been put in charge of developing a game plan of documenting and recording statistics and goals to prevent another accreditation warning.
According to Hicks, the warning concerned the core requirements 2.8 and comprehensive standard 3.3.1 sections of the report.
The first section concerns the adequate number of full-time faculty members to support the missions of the institution and to ensure the quality and integrity of each of its academic programs.
The second section in question calls for the institution to identify expected outcomes, assess the extent to which it achieves the outcomes and provide evidence of improvement based on analysis of the results in several areas. The concerned area in Nicholls’s case was area 3.3.1.1, institutional effectiveness, which deals with educational programs and to include student learning outcomes.
“The institutional effectiveness was a big problem.” Hicks said. “The reason was because we weren’t documenting it correctly.”
A new method has been developed that uses goal setting in each department in order to track the progress of students and what they should know before they graduate.
“We have to show more of the fact that we have a great force of full time faculty instructing each department,” Hicks said. “This new way of doing things will do just that.”
According to Hicks, each department has done a great job of reevaluating their teaching methods and “tweaking” as needed to ensure the progress and success of their students.
The new method will be a portfolio system for each department. At the end of each year, the various departments at Nicholls will present a portfolio at a meeting and this will give faculty the opportunity to compare and contrast student progress and graduation rates in every department.
“This is just a new way of documenting evidence of student success to SACS,” Hicks said.
SACS usually visits Nicholls every 10 years, but the most recent warning was issued at the five-year mark.  This is because the federal government is putting a lot of pressure on SACS to be more proactive in evaluating its universities, according to Hicks.
“There is usually an on- and an off-site evaluation from SACS at the 10 year mark, but at this five-year evaluation, there was only an off-site evaluation,” Hicks said.
According to Hicks, this could be why Nicholls did not get that high of a score during its evaluation.
“Everyone plays a huge part in the wellbeing of this University,” Hicks said. “This new system is a way to constantly be aware of what is going on in all departments.”
University President Bruce Murphy has been on many SACS committees in his career, and he has “very strong ties” to this association. According to Hicks, this gives Nicholls a great advantage because he knows what SACS is looking for, and he is a great “extra pair of eyes” when reviewing portfolios.
According to Hicks, the faculty has given her positive feedback, and this new system seems to be very effective and she hopes it will continue to be a part of the moving forward of Nicholls.
“The amount of effort by faculty has been tremendous, and I cannot thank them enough for their cooperation during this important transition,” Hicks said.