Villanova Magazine Archive

Reaccreditation reaffirms C&F's quality programs

The College of Commerce and Finance received A+ grades from the AACSB Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, which recently reaffirmed C&F's accreditation. Accreditation was extended to all undergraduate and master's degree programs in business. A formal notification letter was sent to Dr. Thomas F. Monahan, dean of C&F, in January.

AACSB's Business Accreditation Committee evaluated the College's programs based upon an on-site visit by peer reviewers. The purpose of the peer review is to stimulate further continuous improvement of quality business programs. The visiting evaluation team members included: R. Charles Moyer, chair of the reaccreditation process, and dean of Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University; O. Finley Graves, vice chair, who is head of the accounting department at Kansas State University's College of Business Administration; Arthur Kraft, advisor, who is dean of the College of Commerce and The Charles H. Kellstadt Graduate School of Business at DePaul University; George R. Burman, member, who is dean of the School of Management at Syracuse University; and Alan N. Attaway, accounting member, who is executive director, School of Accountancy, College of Business and Public Administration, University of Louisville.

The visiting team reviewed and highly recommended reaffirmation of accreditation for all C&F program including undergraduate degree programs: bachelor of science of business administration, bachelor of science in accounting, and bachelor of science in economics, as well as the Summer Business Institute. Graduate programs receiving reaccreditation are: the master's of business administration (MBA), JD/MBA, master's of taxation (MT), post-MBA certificate, executive MBA, and master's in accountancy and professional consultancy.

As stated in the letter to Dean Monahan, AACSB commended the College on significant strengths observed by the visiting team, including: 1) creative curriculum development and innovation efforts, leading to cutting-edge program presentation and successful integration and cross-functional efforts, 2) dedicated, hard-working, student-oriented faculty, 3) successful recruiting leading to increased intellectual contributions from faculty, 4) outstanding student quality, 5) strong strategic planning culture based on continuous improvement, 6) innovative peer advising initiative, 7) successful implementation of laptop initiative, 8) superb physical facilities, including high quality classrooms fully equipped with teaching technology, and more.

Accreditation reflects the quality of C&F's programs, said Dr. Victoria McWilliams, associate dean of undergraduate studies, who coordinated the accreditation process which began during the 1999-2000 academic year. Melinda German, assistant dean of undergraduate studies, assisted in coordinating the undergraduate materials for C&F's graduate programs. David Stout, professor and past chair of accountancy, assisted with reaccreditation of the accountancy program.

For this evaluation, C&F was invited to participate in a new experimental accreditation process, which is mission-based. Instead of creating a self-evaluation report demonstrating that the College met the traditional AACSB standards, C&F created the Experimental Accreditation Process Maintenance Report, which demonstrated how C&F was meeting the goals of its mission and strategic plan. The AACSB experimental accreditation is focused more on the output and direction that the College is going in, as well as the plans for achieving those goals, said Dr. McWilliams. The experimental process offers a bigger picture in terms of the direction in which the College is headed. In general, the reaccreditation process reflects how far C&F has come since its last accreditation. The experimental accreditation is extended for five years, and during that time the College must measure and provide progress on the issues and recommendations detailed by the team report.

The experimental process is valuable to C&F because of the focus on the strategic plan and continuous improvement, said Melinda German.

As stated in AACSB materials, Aaccounting accreditation seeks to improve accounting education in order to meet the evolving needs of the accounting profession. The separate accreditation of C&F's accounting program attests to their high quality.

In a letter to the C&F community, Dr. Thomas F. Monahan, dean of College, wrote: Faculty, staff and students should be proud of their contributions to this glowing reaffirmation, as they worked hard to create value for all of our stakeholders. The investment made by the University in our strategic vision of the future of business at Villanova as manifested in providing us with this fabulous A new Bartley has reinvigorated our faculty and staff.

C&F was one of nine schools out of 125 up for reaccreditation selected to participate in the experimental accreditation process. Other schools included: Boston University, Brigham Young, University of CA (Berkeley), Indiana University, Rollins College, University of Tennessee (main campus), Wake Forest, and the University of Wisconsin (Madison). C&F's undergraduate program has been accredited by AACSB since 1975. The accounting and MBA programs have been accredited since 1985. The undergraduate, graduate and accountancy programs were last reaccredited in 1991.