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Profession Symposium: Assessment in Political Science Redux
I am fortunate to be the coordinator of the Master of Public Administration (MPA) program at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. We have an excellent faculty, all of whom take teaching seriously. Our curriculum is ambitious and relevant to the needs of our students, offering specializations in nonprofit management and local-government management. We are part of an outstanding department in an aspirational institution located in an exemplary city. Our students are intelligent, idealistic, engaged, and committed to delivering high-quality, effective public services. Our alumni almost always find careers doing what they love and doing it well. I know this because I am part of the program. My challenge is: How can I demonstrate to others that the program that I am so proud to be associated with is effectively providing a valuable educational experience for our students?
Although it may not provide a suitable platform for informing the wider community about our program, accreditation does offer the opportunity to demonstrate to our peers that we do meet a set of rigorous standards developed to measure the quality of academic programs in our field. This opportunity occurs about every seven years and is supplemented by annual reports that advise the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA), our accrediting agency, that we continue to meet the standards and deserve recognition as an accredited program.
There are many obvious benefits associated with academic-program accreditation. However, it is neither cost-free nor easy to achieve. However, the benefits of accreditation must outweigh the costs because it is a common requirement in educational institutions from K-12 systems to the most prestigious colleges and universities. Interesting questions arise regarding the origin, ubiquity, and value of program reviews, accreditation requirements, and other forms of evaluation in American education. Although all of these issues deserve attention, the goal of this article is more modest in scope. Its purpose is to discuss the accreditation experience from the program point of view.
I note a few caveats before I begin. First, I represent a small program. We have had as many as seven core faculty members, but our number is currently five--the minimum required for accreditation. We typically register approximately 40 students during the...