UH-Victoria is preparing the Quality Enhancement Plan, which will be enacted in the fall with the goal of placing more emphasis on learning communities in the school.
“The main focus of the QEP is to turn the learning experience into a community experience,” said UH-V Director of Assessment Jill Fox, who is leading the initiative.
“Students living on campus will be grouped into the same classes in small groups and encouraged to study and participate in activities outside of class together.”
The QEP, the latest component of UH-V’s 2014 accreditation review by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, is intended to change the way students and educators approach campus life. The “living and learning” program attempts to combine the two facets of the college experience into a more effective program.
Aside from the linked classes and extracurricular activities, the plan will provide each team of students with additional resources, such as tutoring availability, a support team consisting of multiple faculty members and new residence hall facilities for group study and other activities. In addition, educators will learn new techniques for engaging and teaching students in the classroom.
“UH-V officials anticipate students in the QEP will have higher GPAs, better teamworking skills, increased engagement with the faculty and will be more likely to return their sophomore year,” said a UH-V press release.
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools is a regional accrediting body covering much of the southern half of the country. Schools that SACS governs, including all UH schools, must undergo accreditation every five years.
“There are more than 100 standards that SACS requires of all of its institutions to demonstrate compliance,” said UH-V Provost Jeffrey Cass. “The QEP is one of the core elements and is the one element of accreditation that focuses on the future rather than evaluating and is not an evaluation of the institution’s past performance. It is based off of internal and external research and should benefit the institution’s mission and strategic plan.”
UH-V is currently undergoing its reaccreditation process. Cass said further comments on the process would be premature until the school receives its final review from SACS.