CC earns full accreditation from SACS

Clarendon College received word last week that it has been fully reaccredited by the Southern Association of Colleges & Schools (SACS) Commission on Colleges.

The official decision of the SACS board came last Thursday and was announced at the regular meeting of the CC Board of Regents, bringing a close to the lengthy decennial accreditation process.

“I was very pleased by the report,” said CC President Robert Riza. “There were no negative remarks and no probation.”

The college began work on its ten-year accreditation review in 2014 and completed in 13 months what most schools spend 2½ or three years doing, Dr. Riza said.

“This is the result of a lot of hard work especially by Executive Vice President Tex Buckhaults, former Vice President of Instruction Roger Schustereit, Marketing Coordinator Ashlee Estlack, and QEP Chairman Brian Fuller,” the president said.

In October, a ten-member SACS on-site team spent three days in Clarendon reviewing 27 compliance issues an off-site team had flagged six months earlier and found only two issues that still needed to be addressed. One of those was development of a facilities master plan, and the other concerned hours and staffing levels in the college library. The first has been addressed, and the second will be satisfied when SACS receives a monitoring report on the library one year from now.

Accreditation by the regional association is important because it ensures that credits earned by CC students transfer to other colleges and universities and it also ensures CC is able to receive federal financial aid funds.

In other college news, regents approved purchasing approximately $47,000 for nursing lab equipment in Childress using grant funds, authorized Riza and Athletic Director Brad Vanden Boogaard to negotiate with firms who submitted athletic insurance proposals, and accepted bids on tax delinquent properties.

The board also ratified the hiring of Spenser Shields as Administrative Assistant to the Executive Vice President, Debra McCoy as an administrative assistant in Childress, Connor McKowen as the Assistant Livestock Judging Coach, Sharah Brown as a tutor at the Childress Center, and Bruno Castel as a Spanish instructor and Resident Life Coordinator.