GILLETTE, Wyo. — In a board room in Gillette College’s TEC Building, faculty and staff gathered last Monday evening to workshop the school’s application for accreditation.
Armed with a supply of snacks and bottled water, staff pored over elements of the draft of the school’s application for accreditation with the Higher Learning Commission, or HLC. Presenting mostly in pairs or small groups, faculty went down the list of application sections, laying out everything from the mission statement to class registration roll-out for Gillette College.
Each part of the application asked detailed questions, requiring months of work by staff to gather documentation and feedback for their responses. Dean of Nursing and Health Sciences Lindsey Wakefield explained that she and another staff member sought feedback from across the school for their task.
“We had different employees filter through and give us ideas and information to answer these questions,” Wakefield said. “So we went through all of these and got different views from athletics, from Arts and Sciences, from Nursing and kind of brought all that together.”
Creating a new mission statement also required some digging into records from past board meetings to document approval of previous iterations of the mission statement. Staff were also hard at work to make accessing information easier for students, revamping web pages on tuition and financial aid to make them easier to understand and more informative.
In addition to qualitative data, accreditation also requires thorough documentation about a school’s financial health. This is done to make sure a school has the ability to fund basic operations and the academic programing they have planned.
When examining certain financial markers like liquidity ratios, Gillette College ranks well above the minimum requirements from the HLC. According to meeting documents, the school holds double the recommended liquidity ratio with a 2.0 through June of this year, and holds a higher than required primary reserve ratio as well, holding a 1.20 where a ratio of anything greater than 0.4 is needed.
A liquidity ratio measures an organization’s assets compared to their current liabilities, and a primary reserve ratio is similarly comparing the assets available to cover expenses. With those and other numbers all well above requirements, Gillette College is well-equipped financially as the deadline for application approaches.
The current draft application is currently around 75 pages, but will grow even more as more data are added. Examining the current version took nearly three hours, and college president Dr. Janell Oberlander praised the work faculty had put into the endeavor.
“The amount of work that we just sat here and listened to, I’m a bit overwhelmed, but it’s pretty amazing.” Oberlander said. “You guys have clearly put students first. … It’s clear to me that you guys are ready for the next step. So thank you for all of your hard work.”
While there is still more work to be done, Gillette College is well on its way to submitting its application. Oberlander explained that the finalized application will be approved by the board at its November meeting before being submitted to the HLC. After that, it could take at least three months to hear back.
“I think the important thing for our community to know is this is an ongoing process. … I’m really proud of our campus community, and we’re appreciative of the support we have,” Oberlander said.
