Temple faculty, administration, staff and students are preparing for the reaffirmation of the university's accreditation, the process of voluntary self-analysis and regulation that assures the quality of American colleges and universities.

Every 10 years, a team of higher-education professionals at peer institutions belonging to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education — an association of 519 schools located primarily in the Mid-Atlantic — completes a comprehensive assessment of Temple's programs. The reaccreditation process has two critical components: a rigorous self-study prepared by Temple this summer and fall, followed by a site visit by a team of peer evaluators in spring 2010.

Temple's Middle States Steering Committee — a group of 55 Temple employees co-chaired by Professor Corrine Caldwell of the College of Education, Professor Michael Sitler of the College of Health Professions and Robert Stroker, dean of the Boyer College of Music and Dance and interim dean of the Tyler School of Art — announced that the Middle States site visit to Temple would take place from Feb. 28 to March 3, 2010.

The team of up to nine peer evaluators will be chaired by David Roselle, president emeritus of the University of Delaware and director of the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate.

Roselle and his colleagues will visit Main Campus, as well as select regional locations in Pennsylvania and abroad. During the visit, the team will meet with Temple faculty, staff and students at all levels; tour new facilities; and attend a performance or exhibit.

"The self-study and site visits are such important parts of the process," said Associate Vice Provost Jodi Levine Laufgraben, director of Periodic Program Review at Temple. "Dr. Roselle and his team will be talking to people in the Temple community so they can verify our self-assessment and whether we've met Middle States' standards for accreditation. It's also a wonderful opportunity to show off what's new at Temple since our last visit, from the successful implementation of our GenEd program to the arrival of the Tyler School of Art."

Schools that apply for accreditation must meet the commission's standards in areas such as mission, goals, institutional planning, resources and resource allocation, leadership and governance, administration, integrity, institutional assessment, educational effectiveness, student admissions, student support services, faculty, educational offerings, general education and assessment of student learning.

Schools that fail to meet the commission's standards can face consequences that range from submitting to more frequent evaluations to loss of accreditation, which would cause, among other things, students to be declared ineligible for select federal student assistance programs.

Within months of visiting Temple in spring 2010, the evaluation team will issue a report on the status of Temple's compliance with the commission's standards.

For more information about the reaccreditation process, go to www.temple.edu/middlestates.