The new academic year is well under way. We have a great group of students going through our programs, and we are getting to know the Political Science and Global Development Studies students who have joined our School.
Back in 2000, SPU became the first member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) to earn the coveted accreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), which certifies our program as meeting its standards for excellence in business education. AACSB accreditation is difficult to achieve — only five percent of business programs internationally are able to meet the standards. We are one of the smallest AACSB-accredited programs in the world, and (to put into perspective how hard this is to achieve) we have to meet the same set of standards as Stanford and Wharton.
AACSB accreditation is reviewed every five years, and on October 27 and 28 we had our five-year AACSB on-campus review, led by the business school deans from Baylor University, Abilene Christian University, and the University of San Diego. We will find out in January whether our programs will be reaccredited, but I feel very good about our prospects.
While they were on campus, the AACSB review team met with our faculty, staff, several alumni, and current students. They also did a thorough analysis of our 50-page report and its hundreds of pages of supporting documents.
AACSB accreditation is a big deal, and I’ll let you know in the next newsletter how we did.
Blessings,
Joseph