By Thomas Lynn
A sunshine-yellow stress ball greets people with a smile and a perplexing question — QEP, what will it be?
Perhaps a better question, or at least the most likely to form in a student’s mind, is what is the QEP? The Quality Enhancement Plan is a new program for reaccreditation that is now required of all Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The process of the College being reaccredited comes around every 10 years and in 2014 the heat will be on Daytona State to have all requirements up to snuff.
There are two tracks that need to be fulfilled to achieve accreditation. The first is called the Compliance Certification, filled with 90 different standards that must be met, ranging from efficient library sources, enough faculty and the right facilities for smooth college operations. This particular step of accreditation looks mostly at past and present functions, whereas the QEP, the second track, will be predominately future developments.
The QEP, in the simplest way possible, is a plan aimed at improving student learning. It will only begin to take effect after 2014’s reaccreditation. Until then, the College must come to a decision on one area of improvement. Other schools have already paved the way, some choosing to increase student comprehension or student critical thinking. It’s still up for grabs on what DSC will end up with, however.
To decide DSC’s plan, people from all over the College were brought together to answer the question of what students need and how the school can help them attain it. With over 50 faculty and staff drawing up more than 250 ideas on sticky notes, the priority of the QEP is to narrow them down to one.
Nancy Morgan, Associate Vice President and co-chair of the QEP, says that a committee worked the better part of a summer taking 250 ideas and reducing the number to 10.
The goal is not 10, but one, and the QEP must be supported by strong data and research and not anecdotal facts. Morgan says that to find the most talked about and prevalent problem the College would like to face, anecdotes will inevitably be the most useful information.
“We now have the number down to five and can begin bringing in students to get their opinions,” she added.
Co-chairing with Morgan is Dr. Evan Rivers, Chair of the School of Humanities and Communication. Under their leadership, committees have different roles in the QEP, but for the most part, are sitting in limbo until a conclusion is drawn up.
While the QEP is relatively new, other schools have become involved and SACS has sent out evaluators to check on their progress. Rivers was one such evaluator for another college’s QEP. The college Rivers visited chose improving critical thinking in students and that proved to effect everyone at the school, trickling all the way down to janitors. He says the decision must have a significant impact on every facet of a college.
“If we put a program into place,” said Rivers, “how many people is it going effect?”