The external reviewer reports--part of Duke's ongoing reaccreditation process-are in, and the University is found to be in noncompliance in 10 areas, including competency and qualification of faculty.
"We are going to be found in compliance in most of those 10 areas, if not all," Judith Ruderman, vice provost for academic and administrative services, said in an interview. "And even if we are found not in compliance, that doesn't mean we won't be reaccredited. I do not know of any university in our region of our complexity that has not been found in noncompliance in several areas."
The University is required to submit a Compliance Certification Report to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools as part of the reaccreditation process every 10 years. Ten external reviewers discussed Duke's report, which included a 500-page document, a Web site with 3,000 links and a DVD, Ruderman said.
Five of the areas with which the University was found to be in noncompliance are in various forms of assessment areas, which was formerly a combined category, Ruderman said. The other areas include an inadequate explanation of Trinity College's hybrid model of general education and the University's failure to demonstrate the competency of every faculty member, she added.
"Ninety percent of schools are judged in noncompliance with faculty quality," Ruderman said. "We thought we'd be in that 10 percent [of compliance]-apparently not. Don't worry, we're not going to get not reaccredited."
Duke must now submit a focused report by the first week of February addressing the areas in which the University was found in noncompliance, Ruderman said. SACS will measure the University's compliance after its on-site evaluation in late March, at which the University can discuss its areas of noncompliance with reviewers. Ruderman said SACS will reveal the University's reaccreditation status shortly after the analysis, but an official decision will not be made until December.
Ruderman and Provost Peter Lange expressed confidence that the on-site committee and the focused report would eliminate the confusion external reviewers had with Duke-specific practices, such as those of general education.
"If you listen to what [Ruderman] is saying, you hear every time we do something innovative we get hung up," Lange said. "We believe that we are actually moving education forward, and they just don't get it."
The second part of the reaccreditation process, the Quality Enhancement Plan, will be submitted to SACS Feb. 5, Mary Boatwright, co-chair of the QEP committee, reported to the council. She said the plan will undergo scrutiny by the on-site committee in March.
In other business:
Tracy Futhey, vice president for Information Technology and chief information officer, addressed issues with the new version of the Student Information Services and Systems and the upgrade to the mail system.
She said the "downright rocky" transition to a vendor-supported mail system was necessitated by the volume of traffic and spam messages the old system could not handle. Problems with some individual components of the mail system caused it to crash on several occasions, Futhey said.
"It's not unlike [saying,] 'My car doesn't work,'" she said. "But when it's my car it's easy to see, 'Oh, a tire is flat'.... But in this case we've had a problem here or there, and it's created a perception that the mail system is unstable."
Futhey said several patches were put in place to support those problem-causing components, and the practice has helped stabilize the system.
Functionality was not the problem with new STORM and ACES upgrades, which "work perfectly," Futhey said.
Rather, she said the new interfaces are "something most people might consider a sidegrade rather than an upgrade," adding that Duke and Oracle, the company providing the SISS program, are in conversation about the upgrade.
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