Every ten years, the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) requires academic institutions to reapply for accreditation.

Augustana will reaffirm its accreditation in October 2011, and in preparation, the college has been looking inward.

Initiated by President Rob Oliver, the self-study process began two years ago and will be completed by the end of the semester. Over the summer, administrators will work to complete the editing, layout and printing processes in preparation for the HLC visit in October.

In order to investigate the college from every angle, the self-study input came from students, faculty, support staff, administrators and board members.

"The self-study effort is a collective Augustana community effort," Karen Younger, self-study coordinator said. "There are over 65 individuals participating directly in the self-study and many others providing supportive evidence."

Younger acts as the institutional liaison to the HLC and works to coordinate the accreditation reapplication process.

Another influential member of the reapplication committee is President Oliver. He values the process as a method for the college to reflect.

"This is a great opportunity for us to take a serious ‘look in the mirror' to examine our performance and value, and thus to find opportunities for furthering the mission of the college by continuing our quest for excellence and value," Oliver said. "The self-study allows us to identify areas where we are doing well and those that we could improve upon."

Along with the internal benefits Oliver cites emerging from the self-study, Dean Mark Braun believes it provides external benefits as well.

"It is important that Augustana is accredited so that students and their families know that we are a quality institution that is planning for the future, constantly improving and is well managed," Braun said. "It is a way of indicating to large publics that we maintain high standards."

In order to maintain high standards, Augustana holds both institutional and specialized accreditation. Institutional accreditation covers the entire college, and for Augustana, comes from the HLC.

Specialized accreditations relate to particular programs within the college, such as Council on Education of the Deaf (CED), National Association for Schools of Music (NASM) or the South Dakota Board of Nursing (SDBN).

Overall, Augustana holds accreditation by the HLC, the South Dakota Division of Education and eight specialized accreditations in total.

After the October reaffirmation, Augustana will hopefully hold one more accreditation than it currently does. With the reapplication, the college plans to apply for level one distance-learning accreditation.

"The level 1 distance education approval will allow us to offer up to five percent of  academic programs through distance/online methods," Younger said. "With approximately 60 current academic programs, five percent means up to three programs college-wide can be offered through online or through other distance technologies."

This request for distance-learning accreditation results from a recent interest in the revival of the graduate program in education. And according to Oliver, this program is being constructed for delivery online, but has not yet been approved.

Any level of distance accreditation will change the landscape at Augustana. Braun says the college is looking for ways to include a larger population of learners.

"While we anticipate that we will always be a primarily residential and primarily undergraduate institution, we do have some small graduate programs," he said. "We are looking into whether at least one of those could serve a wider population of adult learners through distance delivery."

As the results of the self-study are finalized, the second step of reaffirmation will begin with a visit from the HLC in the early fall.

"The process of accreditation is where we are examined, first by ourselves, then by a team of outside visitors, to see that we are meeting the mission we exist to perform," Oliver said, "and that we are doing it as well as we can within the limitations we face as an institution."