Dear Colleagues:

UMKC needs your engagement in the accreditation process for our university.

If you were unable to participate in our first open forum earlier this Spring, please join me and members of our Higher Learning Commission team for our second open forum on Thursday, May 2 at 10:00 am in the Health Sciences Building #4301, as we seek your input and answer your questions about our assurance argument and evidence collection.

I know you are busy, and still I hope you will make time to attend. Your involvement and contributions are critical to the reaffirmation of UMKC’s HLC accreditation.

The forum will enhance your awareness of how we strive for campus-wide excellence, even as you work toward excellence in your own unit. Accreditation holds our university to a high standard of quality and provides confirmation that we are living up to our promise to students: to offer them the best educational experience possible. Furthermore, as an accredited university, we are able to generate more research dollars and recruit renowned faculty to teach and discover here at UMKC. Finally, our value to the community we serve is dependent upon our accreditation; it is how our constituents certify our position as a leader in learning.

Each of us has a part to play in ensuring that we are complying with the standards we have set for ourselves and the university. Your participation is critical to ensuring we are putting our best foot forward.

In Fall 2017, I asked Cindy Pemberton and Ken Novak to serve as co-chairs of UMKC’s HLC Accreditation Steering Team, and I asked more than 50 of our colleagues to work on preparing UMKC for our upcoming HLC site visit on December 2 and 3, 2019.

I am deeply grateful to this group for having done the heavy lifting and, at times, tedious work over the past 18 months to gather evidence and craft assurance arguments for the HLC reviewers.

More information can be found at https://info.umkc.edu/accreditation/hlc/

Thank you for considering this request, and thanks again to the co-chairs, the Steering Team, committee members, and to university leaders who have been working so hard on this initiative.

I look forward to seeing you this Thursday, May 2 at 10:00 am in HSB #4301.

Respectfully,

Barb

Barbara A. Bichelmeyer, Ph.D.
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor
Professor of Management

 

slide deck:  May 2 2019__HLC Town Hall Presentation