Stephen F. Austin State University

SFA’s onsite visit for the reaffirmation of our institutional accreditation ended on Thursday, April 1, 2021. SFA is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). In addition to ensuring we are providing an excellent educational experience, SACSCOC accreditation allows SFA to disperse federal financial aid and enables our credits to transfer to other institutions of higher education.

A tremendous thank you goes out to Dr. Marc Guidry and the SFA reaffirmation team—which consists of Karyn Hall, John Calahan, Paul Henley and Shauna Attaway with support from Morgan Cortines, Amy Camacho, Angela Clarke and Shelby DeWitt. Marc and the team did an excellent job on the report, documentation and visit preparation. We had an outstanding visit!

The SACSCOC On-Site Reaffirmation Committee made only one recommendation, that SFA “identifies expected outcomes, assesses the extent to which it achieves these outcomes, and provides evidence of seeking improvement based on analysis of the results for student learning outcomes for collegiate-level general education competencies of its undergraduate programs.” According to SACSCOC vice president Dr. Steven Sheeley, completing the onsite with only one recommendation puts SFA in the “top five to ten percent” of institutions accredited by the Southern Association.

SFA’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), which is reducing student debt, received no recommendations. Dr. Sheeley said that institutions that receive no recommendations on their QEP are “few and far between.” The On-Site Committee called SFA’s QEP “cutting edge” and believes it can become a model for other institutions in the Southern Association.

The SFA reaffirmation team will meet with the Core Curriculum Committee to address the sole recommendation. SFA discontinued its core curriculum assessment plan last year, recognizing the need for more actionable results leading to improvement in student attainment of the core curriculum objectives. Through the recommendation of the Core Curriculum Committee and with approval by the Dean’s Council, SFA then adopted a new core assessment plan, called the faculty trust model. In January 2021, the university held a town hall where assessment results from the faculty trust model were presented, leading to the decision by participants to identify two core curriculum exemplary education objectives needing improvement: critical thinking and empirical/quantitative reasoning. Academic programs have been asked to submit a plan for improving one of these objectives by May 31, 2021. Therefore, the SFA reaffirmation team believes SFA is already on the path to full implementation of the On-Site Reaffirmation Committee’s recommendation and will be working with the Core Curriculum Committee to ensure full implementation.