2007 SACSCOC Compliance Review
The SACSCOC Team worked to produce a copy of the Compliance Certification Report (CCR) for review by the assigned evaluation team and the public. The preliminary draft was posted on Sunday, 12 August 2007, for a review by a member of the SACSCOC team in Atlanta, Dr. Rudolph Jackson. Based on his feedback, the final draft’s release date of 7 September 2007 marked the end of a long and arduous period of intense work by a group of committed individuals.
As you work through the documents, you may find that you do not have access to certain materials. This is intentional. The Team restricted access to a number of documents that contained “sensitive” information such as social security numbers posted on old transcripts and the like. People with security clearance to these documents were required to log in to view such restricted documents
This reaffirmation self-study provided the University a wealth of information about its own procedures and policies, its strengths and weaknesses, and its overall effectiveness. As the review process continued, university members focused on identifying areas of needed improvement and took the opportunity to look for ways to enhance the educational experiences of our students.
If you need official information about our self-study report, you can contact the UT Dallas SACSCOC liaison by email: serenity.king@utdallas.edu.
Compliance Certification Report Navigator
Disclaimer: The Credential Report Navigator tool is no longer in use. The information below was valid during the 2007 Compliance Review project
Previously, a website open to the public, the Compliance Report Navigator provided five tabbed pages with a drop-down menu on the “narratives” page for users to select any of the compliance reports submitted for review. Each document addressed a specific topic of concern to the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACSCOC).
As you read through any of the Compliance Report Navigator (CCR) reports, you’ll notice embedded document references ([1], for example). If you activate the link, you’ll find another web page (if the link is still active because the report was developed in 2007), opening with the document, containing information relevant to the material in the preceding sentence or phrase. These documents are most often UTD-generated documents, such as web pages, policy statements, or other internal documents and reports. Any restricted document will require you to log in and have your UT Dallas NetID authenticated before you will have final access to the supporting document. If you must log in, you may find that you’ll need to be operating within the UT Dallas network; a VPN connection may be required.
You would also notice that the entire list of supporting documents is presented at the bottom of each report. Additionally, on the tabbed page “principles,” you can see the entire list of The Principles for Accreditation to which UT Dallas has responded. You can also see on the tabbed page “supporting documents” a list of the document for the selected narrative. Using the lists, you can activate the document by clicking on the document description. The lists of documents include information about the size and format of each document so that you can determine if you want to open that document. As some of the documents are extremely large, you may prefer not to open a specific document if you’re using a slower or unstable Internet connection.
Credential Report Navigator
Disclaimer: The Credential Report Navigator tool is no longer in use. The information below was valid during the 2007 Compliance Review project.
The Credential Report Navigator provided authorized viewers four tabbed pages with separate pages for faculty credentials and staff credentials. Each credential page provided two buttons: View Standard Reports and Build Custom Report. The Standard Reports contained pre-formatted data, and the report description told you what would be reported. With the Build Custom Report button, you were prompted to select variables to generate your report. If you chose to build a custom report, select the items in the drop-down menu and then press the “search credentials” button. Some of the reports would be very large and would require your patience to generate a report in real time from the actual data files—and provided access to a number of data sets for each person.
For Faculty Credentials, you would have had the option of generating a report based on the term (Spring 2006, Summer 2006, or Fall 2006—and these took a few seconds to build and download); workload (full-time vs. part-time); Faculty Rank’ Tenure status’ Terminal Degree; or the college, department or prefix of courses. Note that the variables related to college and department were system-specific; the student information system codes were used to populate these values. As a result, you may find that a faculty member’s record was included in a list when s/he was not actually tied to that college or department: If a course prefix was connected to more than one school, the faculty member would be connected to each school associated with the course prefix. For example, a LIT class may have had, at one time, been both in Arts and Humanities and in General Studies. As a result, all LIT courses would be tied to both schools.
On a Faculty Credentials report page, you would see the faculty member’s name, whether s/he was full-time (F) or part-time (P) in the first column, as well as the person’s job title. In the second column, you would see the course prefix, course number, and title of each unique combination of that material, and this information crosses all three semesters. Professor X may have taught one of those courses only in Spring 2006, but it would show up in any listing of that professor’s credentials for this report. You can also see whether the course was taught for undergraduate credit (U) or graduate credit (G). In the third column you would see the academic degree(s) and other relevant information that the SACSCOC Team believes qualifies that faculty member to teach that course. In the fourth column, you would see any additional information that is used to show the faculty member’s qualifications to teach the course.
For Staff Credentials, you may have used the Standard Reports. If you wanted to see the credentials of another set of staff members, you could have used the Build Custom Report option. There you would have been able to select the staff associated with a particular department. In either report, you would have noticed that the staff were administrators (generally directors or higher) or staff members with specific licenses or certificates required for their positions. Once you had a report open, you would see the employee’s name and job title in the first column. In the second column, you would see a link to a job description if one is available. In the third column, you would see a list of documents used to certify that the person is qualified to hold the position. In the fourth column, you would see the actual decision and who certified the employee’s credentials.
Assessment Navigator
Disclaimer: The Assessment Navigator tool is no longer in use. The information below was valid during the 2007 Compliance Review project.
The Assessment Navigator provided you access to the assessment reports for academic degree programs, core curriculum courses, and administrative support programs. Reports may have been completed or incomplete, depending upon which review cycle was active and whether or not cycle deadlines had passed.
Core Curriculum Assessment reports were available for fall and spring terms by area. Academic and Instructional Assessment reports were available by academic year, by degree or certificate program. Operations and Support Assessment reports were available by fiscal year, and by some level of function, such as department, division, sub-unit of operation, or service.