CEA Accreditation

Accreditation is a process by which experts in a particular field determine common standards and choose to regulate themselves according to those standards. In order to become accredited, especially in the field of education, a program or institution participates in a voluntary process of peer review, designed to improve and assure the quality of the program or institution. Within the higher education community, oversight for education programs and institutions is the purview of accrediting agencies, state regulatory agencies, and the U.S. Department of Education. The goals of accreditation in education include the following:

• Advancing standards and promoting excellence
• Publicly recognizing programs and institutions that meet accepted standards
• Assuring the quality of programs and institutions to the public
• Providing a means of ongoing self-assessment and continuing education for programs and institutions
• Providing an objective means for reviewing the quality of education and education services

An English language program or institution, its administrative and teaching staff, and its students benefit directly from involvement in a comprehensive assessment of how effectively the program or institution meets its stated mission. By evaluating the quality of its programs and services with respect to the CEA Standards for English Language Programs and Institutions, which were drafted and approved by professionals in the field, the program or institution can gauge its effectiveness against benchmarks set by the profession. Through the on-going annual reporting and reaccreditation process, programs and institutions continue their commitment to high quality. (Commission on English Language Accreditation, 2020b)

The CEA Standards for English Language Programs and Institutions comprise 44 individual standards in 11 standards areas. They were developed initially by an Accreditation Advisory Committee (AAC) that took into consideration the various English language program standards that existed in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The standard areas are based on those required by U.S. Department of Education regulations for accrediting agencies that seek recognition by that agency. The individual standards reflect good practice in the field of English language teaching and administration.

The CEA Standards form the basis for all accreditation activities. At eligibility, applicant programs and schools must have the structures in place to be reviewed on the basis of the standards. The site conducts a self-study and submits a self-study report in which it responds to prompts for each individual standard and evaluates itself against each standard. The review by a site visit team and the accreditation decision by the Commission are based on the site’s compliance with the standards.

The CEA Standards can also serve as standards of good practice for English language professionals and organizations interested in program improvement and especially to anyone in the initial stages of developing a new English language program or institution.

The CEA Standards for English Language Programs and Institutions document provides a context for each of the 11 standard areas and a discussion of the intent of each of the 44 individual standards. (Commission on English Language Accreditation, 2020c)

The Department of Languages and Culture of Universidad de los Andes applied for eligibility for accreditation before the CEA in 2018, and this application was accepted in January 2019. In May 2019, the self-study plan where the committees and subcommittees created for this process were assigned the standard areas was accepted. As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report was sent on March 1, 2021, and the peer review visit will be delivered between September 9-11. 

The self-study process is useful for the Department of Languages and Culture at Universidad de los Andes because has allowed us:

• To make explicit the alignment of the educational services provided by the Department to the institutional curricular guidelines.
• To review, bring forth and consolidate the identity of the Department, the expertise and contributions of its staff to the university mission and the quality of its services.
• To streamline the internal structure of the Department to enable fair and accurate assignment and assessment of resources to promote stability, well-being and continuous improvement for all.
• To promote transparency in the application, monitoring and assessment processes for students, teachers and administrative staff.
• To identify strengths and areas for improvement in the structure of the programs, the resources and materials used, the assessment guidelines, instruments and strategies, and the provision of teaching services in general and to define an improvement plan.

The self-study process has been greatly beneficial for our Department in general and for the English programs in particular, as evident in these aspects:

• It allowed members of the English area of the Department to reflect on our programs from an objective and institutional perspective, and, as such, they were able to identify the importance of having a written mission statement which guides academic and administrative activities. This self-study process enabled us to write, in a collaborative and reflective way, a mission statement for the English Department, and one for each of the four English programs currently active.
• The steps we followed to write these mission statements involved analysis of the programs themselves, reflection exercises with faculty, administration and staff to identify key aspects of the mission statements of the University and the one of the School of Social Sciences to ensure institutional alignment, and a series of activities with program and level coordinators to identify the specificities in each case, while keeping in mind the institutional alignment elements present at all time.
• This process helped faculty and staff to gain better understanding on the way mission statements are written, so they are better prepared not only to review these in the near future and also to keep these principles in mind when they review the program.
• These activities were groundbreaking for our Department, and they helped us all identify concrete aspects of our curricular design and management which make us proud, while adopting a sensible approach to other aspects we have understood we must work on to consolidate our programs.
• Other benefits include the fact that the Department has started to collect information to identify students’ learning needs for the first time, faculty and staff could highlight the importance of administrative procedures already in place, like the scheduling conflicts, early alerts and student services like Coffee Time and TiPPS, and they have become aware of the opportunity they were missing by not having exploited data from grades reports to better inform curriculum design and review. This is why the review done for aspects related to Curriculum, Length and Structure of Program of Study and Student Achievement will include them in a more organic, interrelated structure.
• The knowledge acquired in the design and administration of the placement tests for the AESP and EDP programs will be very useful to align the review of curricular aspects of the programs, define cut-scores and streamline our placement and assessment processes. The next years will be mostly devoted to the consolidation of curricular guides for all the English programs and to improve our curricular management practices.
• Since the self-study process started at the beginning of 2019, several aspects have improved: the creation of the Technical Committee for English-relates Issues (CTI), which has representation of all programs, administration and, as from last semester, representatives of part-time instructors. CTI has become a key unit to submit, analyze, discuss openly and make decisions based on evidence, data, and regulations regarding curricular issues, course planning and administration and issues related to Faculty and students.
• The self-study process helped members of the English area of the Department realize that, as part of a greater institution, contracts for Faculty, especially for part-time instructors, did not include specific information as to their duties, as they were done in a general template for all faculty at the University. This situation was presented to CTI initially, the subcommittee in charge of this analysis prepared drafts of job descriptions which were reviewed collaboratively, and presented to CTI once again, and then to the Dean of the School of Social Sciences, the Legal Directorate and the Directorate for Human Management and Organizational Development of the University to ensure these drafts complied with Labor the Colombian Law and all applicable regulations. When these documents were ready, they were shared with all Faculty, and they were eventually incorporated as an addendum to all contracts from 2021-10.
• In addition, a first draft of the Student Complaints process has been created so as to keep track and incorporate students’ voices into our academic and administrative process in a more effective way. These kinds of processes are included in the institutional organization of the University, but the self-study process helped identify the importance of having a user-friendly, effective and principled system. It will take some months to pilot it, but we are sure it will be very beneficial for our students, our faculty and staff, and for the programs as a whole.
• A key element in all this process has been the active participation of all the different members of faculty and administration staff of the University and the Department and the underlying principles of professional development and focused collaboration as the basis for strategic program improvement in adequate working conditions for all. This has also brought forward a positive attitude towards program management and it has allowed us to recognize talents and skills in the different members of our academic community. The outstanding work done by program/course coordinators and administration at the Department, not only to complete adequately the different stages of this self-study, but to ensure their programs are properly implemented, is a clear indicator of their qualifications, professionalism and their commitment to the achievement of institutional goals by providing high-quality educational and administrative services to all the students attended by the programs and to all the units the Department has linkages with.
• Finally, through the process we were able to recognize several issues related to the complexity of the institutional system which keeps the University working properly and enabling the different units and people who work for it to have the resources they need to perform well. The findings in terms of Facilities, Administrative and Fiscal Capacity and Student Services made us realize how competent and ethical the practices at the University are. We are certain the findings of this self-study and the Program Development, Planning and Review will help us provide even better educational services in a few years.

As a consequence of this process, the Department has designed a Program Development, Planning and Review (PDPR) plan which has started being implemented and will be actively executed and monitored until mid-2024. The peer-review visit to be carried out between September 9-11 of 2021 will help us obtain an informed external perspective to upgrade our PDPR and streamline our action plan. Comments, welcome at cea.acc.coordination@uniandes.edu.co!