Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

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Welch Suggs • College/Community Partnerships (1993-1999) • Implementing Urban Missions (1997-2001) • Engaging Communities and Campuses (1998-2005) Helping institutional leaders obtain information that can be useful in decision-making is another long-standing area of interest for CIC. The concern that colleges have good data for institutional research dates back to the Institutional Research and Planning Project of 1972, a three-year initiative for which CASC secured $900,000 in grants from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to help colleges set up offices of institutional research. Another early CASC initiative was Advancing Quality Education. One of its components involved administering voluntary standardized tests at CASC member institutions to track the preparation of students in their sophomore and senior years, and then comparing the results to those of similar students at other kinds of institutions. The second component was a survey of the business practices of small colleges. Together, the two components established that CASC members were similar to other small colleges in their financial administration and student achievements. The results also gave the organization a benchmark to evaluate later experiments and measure deviations from the norm. Data-informed decision-making is becoming increasingly vital at institutions with limited budgets and sharply rising costs. In 2002, CIC initiated a series of Data and Decisions Workshops in partnership with the Association for Institutional Research to train college teams to acquire and make use of institutional and comparative data to inform campus decision-making. The Data and Decisions Workshops are funded by the National Center for Education Statistics. In 2004, with assistance from The William Randolph Hearst Foundations, CIC developed the Key Indicators Tool to benchmark data on students, faculty, and finances for 2001 CIC announces a new strategic plan and grants the first Heuer Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Undergraduate Science Education. The Council launches the Teaching Scholar Partnerships Program to assist institutions to improve mathematics, science, and technology education in K-12 classrooms; and Presidential Leadership Services to strengthen college and university leadership. 83
From Accreditation to Validation: CIC’s First Half-Century member institutions. Presidents at CIC member institutions now receive annual confidential reports showing how their institutions measure up against peers. In addition to better utilizing data to improve campus decision-making, CIC launched a new endeavor in 2004 to measure institutional contributions to student learning. A consortium of CIC member colleges has been recruited to use the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), a new measurement instrument developed by the Council for Aid to Education, to assess students’ critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and writing skills. A unique feature of the CLA is the ability to measure the “value added” by a college to student learning over a four-year undergraduate education. The CIC/CLA Consortium is receiving financial support from the Teagle Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Accreditation The Council’s first mission in 1956 was to help its members attain the formal credentials they needed to demonstrate their worth to the public. In higher education, the most valued credential is regional accreditation. In similar fashion, one of CIC’s major recent efforts has been to help teachers get the credentials they need to demonstrate their worth. The need for an alternative to the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) became clear in the mid-1990s. There was widespread dissatisfaction with the existing mechanisms for obtaining approval for a college that wanted to offer a teacher preparation program. A number of CIC members determined to do something about the situation. Frank B. Murray, former dean of the 2002 CIC, with Getty Foundation support, initiates the Survey of Historic Architecture and Design on the Independent College and University Campus. Also launches Transformation of the College Library Workshops in cooperation with the Council on Library and Information Resources. The first Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History seminar for CIC faculty members is held in New York. 2003 Membership surpasses 500 colleges and universities. 84
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Thanks also are due to all the tale
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Preface Richard Ekman The Council o
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Small by Design: Resilience in an E
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John R. Thelin In American higher e
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Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

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