Unaccredited programs seek quality check

Gonzaga is an accredited university, recognized by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. However, there are a handful of degrees within the university that are not accredited by the professional accreditation agencies in their field. Department heads in the School of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences are aiming to change that in the next few years.

Computer science has had a particularly arduous process. Department head Paul DePalma said that a minor detour is the only reason the department is not accredited already.

"We've been at this for a long time, maybe 10 years. We've never been turned down. What's happened is that there's always been some changes. We had a full accreditation report ready six or seven years ago, we had scheduled a university review, and then the decision was made to move the computer science department out of the College of Arts and Sciences and into the School of Engineering," DePalma said.

While not much will change curriculum-wise for accredited departments, DePalma said he believes that the process forces programs to improve themselves.

"ABET [the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology] is our accrediting agency. They have a very rigorous method by which we have to show that our program is continually improving," he said. "We've done that informally in the past, but this really forces us to focus on being precise about making the program better year after year."

Two other programs in the School of Engineering, both headed by Peter McKenny, will be up for accreditation in fall 2014. Engineering management and transmission and distribution are potentials.

"There's very few undergraduate engineering management programs nationwide. I'm thinking maybe two dozen max," McKenny said. "I think there's only about half a dozen of those accredited."

Transmission and distribution is a graduate program, focused on industry and taught online, that was started in 2006 to educate engineers working in the utility industry.

"All those power lines you see running up and down the country? We're focused on how do you build these, how do you design them, what's involved in the design – anything related to how a power system works, that's what we cover in our courses," McKenny said.

If ABET approves the program, GU will be one of the first schools in the nation to have an accredited transmission and distribution degree.

"[It's] very unusual to have graduate programs accredited. It's only recently that ABET has started looking at master's degree programs. In the whole nation there's probably only a dozen master's degree programs accredited at this time. We're hoping to be one of those," McKenny said.

Accreditation has a more tangible benefit for engineering students.

"It would help students if they wanted to become a professional engineer," McKenny said. "Without accreditation it takes five years after graduation before you can apply to become a professional engineer; with an accredited program you can actually apply after four years."

DePalma is confident that his department will get accredited. "I can't see any reason why we would not. We're a strong program, it's just a matter of getting the paperwork together," he said.

The music department is seeking accreditation from its professional accrediting agency, NASM (National Association of Schools of Music). Department head Gary Uhlenkott, S.J., said that his situation is different from programs like engineering or law.

"It's very rare that any of the departments within arts and sciences get accredited," he said.

Uhlenkott said accreditation would help the music department because GU would appear on lists of accredited programs that high school students routinely peruse before applying to college.

"We still have people who come up and say, ‘Oh, I didn't know Gonzaga had a music program' because we don't appear on those kinds of lists even though we do our own recruiting," he said.

Students interested in the computer science department are also aware of accreditation.

"I've been here for 20 years, and I never ever heard this question before two or three years ago, and now students are starting to ask [about accreditation]," DePalma said.

McKenny said that he doesn't think that Transmission and Distribution's accreditation status affects the number of students who join the program.

"We're spending a lot of money advertising, but what we actually find is that more of our students are coming from the students taking the courses," he said. "Probably about a third of the students are brand new, and the other third are bringing in all their buddies."

Uhlenkott said that even though Music isn't officially accredited yet, the application process is already paying dividends for his department.

"For us to get leverage to improve our own program and to have the resources available to us to improve our program from the university itself it helps to have an outside body come to say ‘this is what you need,'" he said.