NCA Academic Quality Improvement Project - Criteria

1. Helping Students Learn identifies the shared purpose of all higher education organizations, and is accordingly the pivot of any institutional quality analysis. It examines an institution's systems and processes for:

• developing new academic programs, reviewing, reshaping, and reinvigorating current ones, and phasing out programs no longer viable, effective, desirable, or necessary
• delivering instruction and encouraging and promoting academic and other forms of student development, in and out of the classroom
• strengthening educational effectiveness, assessment, and evaluation
• measuring, analyzing, observing, tracking, recording, and grading student academic achievement, in individual courses, in degree programs, and in co-curricular contexts for institutional improvement
• developing, staffing, delivering, supporting, scheduling, evaluating, ordering, retiring, and revising credit courses, continuing education and special instructional activities
• recruiting and admitting students, developing, implementing, and evaluating educational student support and development services, student registration and record-keeping
• establishing, articulating, publicizing, encouraging, maintaining, and reviewing targets for student development performance (learning, behaviors, values, activities, etc.), including residence life, student activities, advising, counseling, etc.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

2. Accomplishing Other Distinctive Objectives addresses the processes that contribute to the achievement of an institution’s major objectives that complement student learning and fulfill other portions of the institution’s mission. It examines an institution's systems and processes for:

• achieving central and important purposes other than cognitive and affective student learning

3. Understanding Students' and Other Stakeholders’ Needs examines how a quality-driven institution, knowing it will ultimately be judged by all of those external or internal individuals and groups that have a major stake in the institution’s success, works actively to understand their needs. It examines an institution's systems and processes for:

• gathering, analyzing, and using information about the needs, preferences, and requirements of students and other stakeholders; the value they place on institutional services and activities; and the basis they use for judging institutional performance
•  establishing, articulating, publicizing, maintaining, and reviewing targets for student performance (learning, behaviors, values, activities, etc.)
• maintaining useful relationships with students, former students, and other stakeholders
• communicating to the public
• forming and using advisory committees

4. Valuing People allows the higher education institution to demonstrate its commitment to the development of the talents of all of its faculty, staff, and administrators since the efforts of all are required for institutional success. It examines an institution's systems and processes for:

• designing, organizing, and managing work and jobs to promote individual initiative, cooperation, collaboration, innovation, and flexibility while keeping current with educational and institutional needs
• identifying, recruiting, selecting, hiring, orienting, training, developing, assigning, evaluating, retaining, replacing, and dismissing academic staff, support staff, administrative staff, volunteers, interns, etc.
• insuring that all members of a higher education institution (including faculty, staff, and students) will be treated with respect and dignity, and will be provided avenues for rational examination and redress of grievances

5. Leading and Communicating addresses how an institution’s leadership and communication structures, networks, and processes guide the institution in setting directions, making decisions, seeking future opportunities, and building and sustaining a learning environment. The leadership system includes not only those who have day-to-day supervisory or decision-making responsibility to manage the institution, but also the oversight entities such as institutional or state boards, or trustees. This criterion examines an institution's systems and processes for:

• communicating mission, philosophy, values, and objectives to all members of the institution, and for making certain those values underlie all decisions
• establishing governance and decision-making structures and procedures

6. Supporting Institutional Operations addresses the variety of institutional support processes that, while they do not directly impact student learning, help to provide an environment in which learning can thrive. It examines an institution's systems and processes for:

• establishing, maintaining, and improving administrative institutional support programs
• providing institutional support services (e.g., accounting, maintenance, purchasing, risk management)

7. Measuring Effectiveness examines the information system the institution employs to collect and use data to responsibly manage itself and to drive performance improvement. It examines an institution's systems and processes for:

• examining all processes related to the information it does or might collect or use
• gathering, maintaining, and making available a variety of information it collects to those who need it, including data on students and other stakeholder groups; data on institutional programs, academic and other; data on the performance of institutional operations and processes; and information concerning students, stakeholder groups, programs, and performance in comparable institutions
• selecting, managing, and using information and data to support overall institution goals, with strong emphasis on action plans and performance improvement

8. Planning Continuous Improvement examines how an institution aligns what it wants or hopes to do with what it actually does. It examines an institution's systems and processes for:

• establishing operational plans and performance targets for academic programs, academic support programs, and institutional support programs
• allocating resources (money, space, materials, equipment, and personnel) in support of institutional planning and priorities

9. Building Collaborative Relationships examines an institution’s relationships – current and potential – to analyze how they contribute to the institution’s accomplishing its mission. It examines an institution's systems and processes for:

• promoting, monitoring, and evaluating internal responsiveness, cooperation, and collaboration
• maintaining contact with feeder and receiver institutions and schools to ensure common understanding of the needs of transfer students
• establishing, reviewing, and evaluating partnerships with other institutions and organizations