Beyond Compliance:
Building a Data-Driven Accreditation Culture

00:38Thank you for joining me today for another episode of Data Stakes, where I have conversations with professionals who work directly in the institutional research or effectiveness field or are data adjacent in their role in higher education. Today's conversation will focus on the importance of knowledge management to successfully meet campus accreditation needs. I'm really pleased to say that my guest today is Dr. Ken Matthews. Vice President of Academic Affairs and Institutional Effectiveness at St. Cloud Technical and Community College in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Dr. Matthews has additional experience from his tenure at Daytona State College as the Associate Vice President of Enrollment and in his current role as a peer reviewer for the Higher Learning Commission. Ken, it's great to see you again. and outside our initial meeting when you were a member of the peer review team for my former institution's 10-year reaffirmation visit. So I thought we could start our conversation today about why we think accreditation is important and then talk about some specific needs outlined in HLC's federal criterion policy. So before we start, I'd like to make sure that our listeners recognize that nothing we share today should be taken as prescriptive. We're going to talk about accreditation requirements and how we may have addressed campus needs, but we're not going to tell you what to do. The most important thing you can do is understand your campus and its unique organizational strengths, its mission, related value and vision statements. and create organization-specific strategies. So here's something I've never been embarrassed to share. I love accreditation. In fact, my involvement in accreditation began during my first role as the assistant to the dean of students, and that led to my first institutional effectiveness role in 2007. At that time, my campus was a member of the AQIP pathway. And because I've always been a bit crazy for efficiency, I was thrilled to see how the pathways requirements could break down silos, integrate continuous quality improvement activities, and generally drive sustainable change. And my enthusiasm never really changed during my 19-year career in higher education. So now, I'm going to shut up and let's talk about your why. So Ken, why are you involved in accreditation work? and what prompted you to apply to become a peer reviewer?

03:07Well, thank you for inviting me to speak about this, Debbie. My motivation and my interest in accreditation work really comes from what I believe the accreditation work has the opportunity to do for an institution. We all think immediately about compliance when we think about accreditation, making sure everything is in order, making sure we've checked a lot of boxes. But if we have... a mature system or a maturing system. One of the great opportunities it affords us is to look at our institution and really, really ask some questions about how well we are meeting our mission. How well are we advancing the vision that we have for our institution? How well are we providing the services that we say we provide? And so it provides an opportunity to do some really core self-reflection. And as a data person myself and as a planner myself, Like I love this kind of stuff and accreditation is a great framework for guiding that work. It helps us ask questions of ourselves that we might not otherwise ask. And I think that's the most valuable part of the exercise, especially if it can be seen through a lens that is not something that we do sort of episodically, but as a way of sort of existing in the institution. And that can take some work, setting some good foundation. and creating some mature systems in order for the institution to to utilize accreditation, processes, and those sort of things in that light so that they don't feel compliancy, they don't feel overburdening, it just becomes a part of what the institution does. And as a peer reviewer, what I love the most is learning from other institutions what they're doing. every time I go on a visit or every time I read a report, I take something from that because there is great work being done all over the country and seeing how people... adjust and adapt to challenges in the context of their mission is actually a very valuable lesson for any peer reviewer. The other thing I like to do is just to talk to people about what they're doing and it's always nice to be able to recognize great work. It's also nice to be able to when when we have these opportunities to work constructively with an institution who might be struggling with something. We all struggle with something.

05:33All

05:33Or some things, right? And having colleagues come and talk about that in a constructive way rather than a punitive way is a great opportunity. So that's something I love about peer review.

05:46Yeah, I. My first institution, we we had an administrator who called accreditation the self licking ice cream cone. As as if everything that was done for accreditation work was made was merely to sustain their own existence. And truthfully, I never found that I wrote two, possibly three.

06:03Hmm. Yeah.

06:10Systems portfolios during my time and then of course the the open path the the pathway document that I did at Kelly College and never once in all of that time did I ever meet anyone from the commission who saw their role that way. I've always seen

06:12Mm-hmm. Right.

06:29The peer reviewers, our liaisons, as people who want to partner with us to, like you said, help us achieve our mission and to also maybe reveal a few of our blind spots and to make sure that accreditation isn't an add-on.

06:35Right. right. Mm-hmm.

06:49That's, you know, that was always my goal was to make sure that accreditation work was at the forefront of everyone's thinking, not because I harped on it all the time, but because we had woven those expectations into what, what we were doing.

07:05Right? Conversations that I've had at Institutions where I've worked are things like, you know, when you're starting from that compliance mindset, you know, what I ask people to do is read the criteria. Is there anything here you disagree with? Anything that we shouldn't be doing? Should we not be asking ourselves as students are learning? Should we not be responsible? Should we not be ethical? And everyone, of course, agrees with what's there. And so.

07:24Yes. Right.

07:32It's a great opportunity for us to also ask ourselves, when you think about consumer protection, right? There have been bad actors in the history of higher education, unfortunately, and many of us, all of us probably listening are not in that situation, right? And so when you think about, we make promises to our communities. How do we know if we're delivering those promises, if we're saying that we do what we say we're going to do, but not just that? Asking the next question, which is, are those things we're doing actually effective? And I think that's the piece. It's not just about doing. It is about, are you effective in what you are doing? How is it impacting your mission? How is it impacting your students and your community? And when you see, if people can get to that,

07:56Right. Bye.

08:14I think that's where people really gain a lot of value out of the whole process.

08:19Yeah, yes, agreed. So let's move into the importance of mature knowledge management culture to strengthen an institution's ability to meet accreditation standards. So what do you see as important for data work to align with accreditation?

08:33Mm. You know, this can be, obviously each institution is very different. And one of the things that sometimes happens is people produce a lot of data, but don't have the systems to act on it. And so I think something that is important to think about is accreditation doesn't just require more data. But how do you align that data with your mission and your planning work? Can you draw a line from this is what we learned to therefore this is what we did and here's how we assessed it later? You you look at more data or whatever it is and that cycle and starting small if needed. until people are comfortable with that and then growing. Starting with really clear questions about your institution. And this is where accreditation, the criteria, I think help point to some of the questions that institutions ought to be asking and do ask, right? But it can be a helpful framework. So what are those questions? What are those definitions that are common through the institution so that we have a common language across departments and divisions? And taking the time to build trust in data. IR folks, I know will relate to this challenge. You produce a set of data and somebody looks at it and says, this isn't right. But you know that based on what you have from a technical standpoint, it's correct. It is what the system shows or whatever. It's the number of applications and how many converted or the number of people who are enrolled in a major. What does someone mean when they say it's not right? And helping clarify those definitions, those contexts that create trust in the data. And more importantly, probably, not probably, certainly, more important is trust in the people helping run the data. So developing relationships for IE folks, IR folks throughout the institution, I always joke with people at my institutions that one of the things I like about IR and IE is I'm in everybody's business.

10:29Yes.

10:45I can learn about everything going on at the institution and I love that. But that also requires if I'm going to poke around in your business and talk to you about what you're learning and what we are learning as an institution, you need to trust me. And so it is incumbent upon me to build relationships through the institution. And I think that's something that people sometimes overlook when they're looking at knowledge management. There is a trust mechanism. It is not pure logic. It is not pure reasoning. And so I always encourage people, really take the time, bring people to the table, let them understand your thought process, hear what they have to say, and adapt as you go. Because if you can't do that, then you can't agree on how to act on the data that you're seeing, right? And you sort of sit in this place of frustration for people. And so... And how do you document that, right? So that nothing is living just in somebody's head, but that you have clear documentation to share with people that is clear for them as you go forward. So you sort of create a little data bank and a history. You can start telling the story of your institution through these data and knowledge. resources.

11:56So yeah, totally agree. So you know, because of your visit to Cowley College and the question that I think you asked everyone that you talked to, which was, they know about the AIM? So to give our listeners a little bit of context, the AIM is a set of key performance indicators that Cowley College had had for many years, but we decided to take a fresh look at them for our quality initiative, which is something

12:06Yeah.

12:24That Open Pathway members will do during year four. And when we determined that data and the development of a knowledge management culture would be the best thing for us to focus on, we actually submitted our quality initiative paperwork a year early. And that's exactly why, was because I told the president at that time it was going to take many conversations. was only a lift like this was only going to be successful if everyone felt they'd had their say.

12:48Hmm. Mm-hmm.

12:56And that meant we had to have time. I wanted that extra year so I could go around from the department to department to department and say, these are the metrics, are they still valid? What research question are you trying to answer? And I'd been at Cowley for a few years by then and had built up some trust. But when I started there, I used to tell everyone, I'm not just being nosy,

13:22Mm-hmm.

13:23Understand what you do, trying to learn what you do. And my background at my first institution was very helpful because I supported everyone in student services. So by the time I made it to Cowley College, I'd already supported the financial aid director. I'd filled in a summer for the registrar. I entered all of the admissions data. And so I really had a strong foundation of understanding what everyone was doing. Dr. Riddle asked me during my interview at Cowley is, Would I always make decisions based on the results of a data analysis? And my answer to him was no. And I don't think it was what he expected. But you can't just always make decisions just on a set of numbers. You have to have that context. You have to be thinking about

14:03Mmm. Right. Mm-hmm.

14:18Whether the decision that you're going to make is going to have unintended consequences and other things. It's never really just about the data, it? It's also about the people.

14:23You Right. It is absolutely about people. And, you know, that is one of the things that I also come from, I think, as you shared in the intro, I come from student affairs. My first job was an admissions advisor and taking that into IR and IE, that was incredibly helpful context. So something that I always share with IR folks as I meet them along the way, or if they're working at you know, at SCTCC. is if your main background is IR, data analytics, you have to take some time to get to know people. You have to take some time to sit with them in their office and really understand how is the data that you're looking at actually created? It's a huge part of the context. And like you said, what is it that matters to those individuals? Right?

15:05Yeah. Yes.

15:22Much see our role as like internal consultants and you can't do that work well without understanding the priorities of the people that you're serving throughout the institution and so and then we have an opportunity to then connect the dots that people might not be seeing because we have that broad view. So how does this impact resources that we're allocating? How does this impact the staffing that we need? So you can make a decision based on data, but if you have no people to execute it, it's not going to get you very far. So take another look at that.

15:51Right. Yes. Okay, so listeners, if your institution is a member of the Higher Learning Commission, you've probably already aware of the most recent changes to policy CRRT.B10010, criteria for accreditation. This is the thing that we talk about all the time. In fact, until our colleagues often wish they'd never heard the word criterion or criteria again. There's a lot we could talk about but we're going to take some time to focus on two components in criterion four. Criterion 4 is sustainability, institutional effectiveness, resources, and planning. And there are two subcomponents that we're going to focus on here for a few minutes. They are 4B, resource base and sustainability, and 4C, planning for quality improvement. So let's go straight to the HLC document. providing evidence for the criteria for accreditation. And if you're not familiar with this document, you need to go to the commission's website and find it. This is a terrific listing of suggestions for evidence that you might already have that can demonstrate that you're meeting the federal criterion. And there is a bullet point listed for component 4B enrollment plan, current enrollment and enrollment projections. So Ken, what are your recommendations as a former enrollment management administrator to anyone listening whose institution is currently developing data analytics to meet the needs of a rapidly changing enrollment environment?

17:33Well, think you hit on the rapidly changing element. And to me, that is the biggest or the most important thing that people need to think about. Many models that I've seen for enrollment, if they're statistical models, they have They have confidence intervals that are so wide, you wouldn't even guess the kinds of numbers that they actually produce. And I think that's a reflection of the volatility of different things that we follow. But it's also the fact that we cannot always capture the influences on enrollment in an equation, right? There's too much uncertainty even when we have a lot of data to put in. And much of our data, we rely on economic data that has a lag. isn't really predicting where things are going necessarily. you know thinking about not just point-in-time projections, which that's a good starting point, but thinking also about moving sort of moving from that to scenario planning. What if where are the things that are really uncertain in our environment that it could go up, it could go down, it could go sideways, it could disappear. I mean, just think about what online education, artificial intelligence are doing with higher ed. Artificial intelligence is changing so quickly that... it's very hard to keep up, right? And students are using that as, know, in all kinds of ways, some healthy, some not as healthy for their education. But just in looking at how that will impact our future in terms of enrollment, retention, completion. there's a lot of uncertainty there that you can't just model because there's no good data set to use to bring in. And so really understanding your local context and really thinking about scenario planning that give you flexibility so that as things change. you have a scenario, you've already thought through that scenario a little bit, right? And then that gives your institution some ability to adapt. We had a very large increase in our dual enrollment students and it was very rapid and we were sort of, in a way we were caught off guard. We weren't expecting it, especially because of the way the, in our system and in our state, PSEO, dual enrollment, how that works. It just, we were just little caught off guard. And so then we had to stop and think about how do we support those students? How do we make sure that the staff that are helping them get the support that they need? And, you know, we hadn't really thought through that because we weren't, we didn't see it coming, right? So for us, that was a big lesson in terms of. what are the things that we think are gonna be steady, assume they're not going to be, and plan for it. And you can't create detailed plans, but you can think about what that would mean for your institution.

20:08Right.

20:15And looking at things like patterns rather than points, right? What trend data do we have? What are the patterns? Looking at student types, student modalities, how students progress, all of that is part of that equation and it's hard to quantify any of those. And then that goes back again to what you said earlier. It's not just the numbers, it's the story behind the numbers. So even talking to people, so going to advising, what is it you're seeing? What are you hearing from students talking to admissions folks, talking to faculty? What are you seeing in your classroom that is getting in the way of retention? And how can we support you? And so their decision aids, their guidelines, it's sort of like if you're at the bowling alley. and you have those bumper things you put in the gutter. Sometimes that's the best we can do is if we can just keep ourselves out of the gutter, sometimes we're going to hit one pin, sometimes we're going to hit a strike, but being ready for any of those scenarios and thinking about how do I pick up that spare when things don't go right and I don't hit that strike. That's a really important component that I think sometimes is either overlooked or it's just It's hard to get the systems in place to do that kind of work sometimes. Because you need to write people at the table and you need to have those conversations. And that's time.

21:35Yeah, definitely. Here in Kansas, dual enrollment is really, I would say, propping up some of the losses that we've seen in other student populations. So when I left Cowley, some of the conversations we were having was, what is a healthy balance?

21:45Mm-hmm. Right?

21:57With the declining birth rates, with some declining college going rates, yes, dual credit might be propping up even up to 50 % of enrollment, but how long will that last? And then as you said, what will we do? How can we plan for the new scenario when that begins to slack off?

22:07Right. Mm-hmm. Right. Especially when, you know, something, we all want to do dual enrollment because it's the right thing to do. But the realities behind it sometimes for some systems are that you don't always get funded at the same rate, right, as your tuition paying students. And so what that means is the larger your portfolio in dual enrollment, if you're in that situation,

22:24Yes.

22:39The fewer resources you have coming to the college in terms of just, you know, financial resources. And sometimes that can catch us off guard. And we were having similar conversations at Daytona State. What does this mean if our students are not coming here and attending as regular students? We're not going to stop dual enrollment because it's the right thing to do. But we have to be aware of what the impacts are and look ahead into the future for what that impact is going to be on our campus, on our campus services, on our programming, right? If most of your students are PSEO or, sorry that's the term here, if they are dual enrollment students. But they tend to congregate in your gen eds. What does that mean for your technical programs if you offer those? So those are really important questions. And that's just one example. We asked the same question about international students, right? And that has changed a lot with the context of the world right now. So.

23:25Right. guest. Very much so. So now let's take a few minutes on component 4c. So for me, the big takeaway here is that this component is not just about strategic planning. I know I've got many colleagues that say, this is the strategic planning part, but I really don't think that it is. I think it's about the many components of planning that happen across the organization that when you integrate them, create a culture that is future forward. So HLC is providing evidence document lists some key pieces including but not limited to enrollment management plans, facilities and technology plans, strategic planning components, assessment of student satisfaction, KPIs, dashboards, all of that. So what are your recommendations for putting all of the pieces together? Do you have any best practices or specific strategies you can share with our listeners?

24:25Mm-hmm. Yeah, so yeah, this is something that, you know, I think the best way, or one of the best ways I should say, you I don't have all the answers, but one of the best ways that I think people can tell this story and also, again, utilize this as a framework for doing the work of the institution. Often those plans, all those plans you listed, facilities and technology, the academic plan, the larger strategic plan, the enrollment plan, although all the same people or many of the same people are often in the room creating those plans, they're often disconnected. We're not clearly connected. They're sort of tangentially, you know, we think we're going to need some technology over here because our, you know, our classrooms need an upgrade over here. We know we need to expand this space, but those don't always deal with all the realities of the resources for an institution. And so when you say, I don't have the facilities to do what you, what you want to do in the academic plan, the academic plan doesn't always change to meet that reality or Is there then a plan through your foundation or other you know part of your organization to say how do we secure those funds to support those changes for facilities or technology? I would say that's the probably a big opportunity for many institutions is to really think about, know, don't have all the plans if they're just disconnected. You could have one giant plan, technically. So this is one thing that HLC does not say, it has to look like this and you have to call it this. But when you're writing your argument, you want to make those connections for the reviewers who don't know your institution. And so, you know, something that we worked on to great planning through the institution, right? This is an opportunity, all of this is an opportunity to get your entire institution rowing in one direction, right? IT wants to do some things, facilities wants to do some things, academic affairs wants to do some things, enrollments wants to do, well, what do we decide what to do? And how do we make sure all of us are working toward the same goal? So we started with our strategic plan and we did not write new plans. knew any other plans for about a year. We got everyone on board with the strategic plan. We actually used a framework from the four disciplines of execution by Chris McChesney, Jim Hewling, and Sean Covey. So in that book, they talk about something called a wildly important goal. So we started with in our strategic plan we had goals for retention and we asked every unit, every planning unit in our entire institution, your wildly important goal needs to be related to retention. And every single office, no matter what they do at the institution, they wrote a goal, something that they could do to promote student retention. So IT wrote goals around improving response times to tickets that they were having submitted. Facilities created a plan where they would proactively, you know, they did some of this already, but they really, really honed in on how do we identify problems before they're reported to us? So their goal was to lower the number of reports about, you know, this being out of order or whatever it was, right? And our business office, really looked at how they support students in terms of accounts and holds and how they communicate to students, right? And so there was a there was the bookstore. There was activity all through the institution including places that they don't always see themselves as directly impacting retention, although they're very important part of student retention. And so we started, that was a framework we used to say everyone has a wildly important goal and we asked people to focus on just that. We didn't ask them to write any other plan. This is your goal. This is what we need you to do. Nothing else, you know, nothing else matters. I mean, it did, but this is what we want to come and talk to you about time and time again. And we want to understand how are you moving the needle on this? And that really helped the institution focus on retention. And what you saw was that big strategic planning goal was clearly having an effect on everything else. And then we could say, You know, of course we started with an academic plan because that should guide everything at the institution. So we did, we worked that out. We started then plugging in IT and facilities and we just finished our latest facilities plan. And it's very much focused on academic needs and retention. And that is, that started though with very clearly trying to get people aligned on a single goal. The next year we said, we know that's not all you're looking at to know whether your office is effective. So pick one more measure. Pick one more thing. And we slowly scaled up like that. And we still talk about WIGs, know, Wildly Important Goals, WIG. You know, what is your WIG? We're working on our new strategic plan now and I know that will be another... another chance for us to look at those wigs for people and really think about how are you moving the dial on a specific initiative at the college and how are you coming to the table to support that. So it's that integration piece I think that sometimes is challenging and every institution will have its own culture and its own priorities, but start with just a few. If you're scattered, it's really hard for people to come together. What are the common indicators that you're going to watch over and over and over again? Just pick a few, right? Start there. how do you know, when do you stop to say, what did we learn? And what do we have to change? You have to have really specific times that you do that and if you create a system for that... it will happen naturally and people will actually look forward to it. So we actually have had our, you know, people come to our president and say, what's going on with all of our wigs across the Institute? People are curious now about what are people doing and what are they accomplishing and how can I help? And it creates that kind of momentum, which then makes all of that. more natural for people because they can get excited about something. It's not about the Excel sheet that they're filling out occasionally, you know, or the planning software they're plugging things into. And this helps from a reviewer standpoint. Those kinds of activities help us see that.

30:38Right.

30:52Planning is truly embedded in institution and it's not sort of performative or just something people are checking off, right? And we all have work to do there in terms of making it feel cozy and everyone loving it. You're always gonna have people who go, I have to fill this out? Do I have to document this? And that's okay, right? But. That is something that comes across. And so to your point when I was asking everyone about the AEM dashboards, my curiosity was how much has this taken hold throughout the institution? And we saw people say it's the best thing since sliced bread. Some people were still learning. And all of that is OK, right? because everyone's going to be a little bit different in the institution. And so that was great to see.

31:30Right. Yeah, but I think that you hit on something that people really don't make a connection and that is successful planning can cause enthusiasm. People then feel more valued at their job and it can be an incredible boost to campus morale because people say, okay.

31:45You right. Mm-hmm.

31:57I, maybe I'm still not so crazy about being stuck at a desk eight hours a day, but man, I am, I am really hitting it out of the park for students. And, you know, and I have to say the word cozy and strategic planning, I'm probably not going to let you forget that ever.

32:02Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Hahaha Yeah.

32:16So now I have one last question for you, and it's a surprise. I didn't share this one with you earlier. But you did utter the words artificial intelligence. So how do you see the use of AI influencing accreditation work as it becomes more embedded into our organizations?

32:22Alright, boy. Mmm. Yeah, I, you know. It's hard to know because it's changing so quickly, but just some things that I can see. One is, you know, how are there opportunities to leverage it to make things more efficient for institutions who are, many of whom don't feel like they have enough staff to perform certain work that spend a lot of time kind of doing things that maybe we could do more effectively by utilizing AI. But I think the big focus is also going to be, right, that broader focus is going to be what does this do to learning in the classroom and you know we're holding a listening session I'm holding a listening session with the faculty tomorrow at our institution to talk about what are they seeing in the classroom now because every semester there's something new so now there are AI agents that can complete a course for you. Well, how are we protecting against that? That's a key part of the Higher Learning Commission's requirements. How do you know when you've got somebody in an online class, how do know they're them? And these bots create a real challenge. And so even among faculty who are embracing artificial intelligence in terms of supporting learning, they have serious concerns about

33:36Yes.

33:48Do I know who I'm grading? And so what we're seeing are things like an exam is completed in three minutes and it's 50 questions. You probably couldn't read it in three minutes. So how do we explain that? And we're working with students who they have a very different view of what artificial intelligence should and should not be doing. And so I think we're gonna see More and more, we're going to see faculty wrestling with what their discipline means to them personally and what it means to be a writer, what it means to be an effective communicator, what it means to be a scientist, and how those tools are incorporated. But from an accreditation standpoint, I think the big issue is going to be assessment. And how do we continue to ensure that what we say students learn, that's the promise we make, our student learning outcomes, that's promise we make to the students, to our employers, to our community. How are we ensuring that students truly are learning that? And... can be effective in the workplace, that students are not coming through our programs and wasting their time or their money. And so, yeah, I think it's something we're going to have to watch carefully. But those questions are already embedded, right, into the criteria. And so they're not new questions, but it's certainly a new challenge. And so I would welcome thoughts from anyone listening as well, because it is something we're going to continue to have to deal with.

34:56Yes, there they are. Yeah.

35:09And it's the pace of change for me that's very concerning. It's so hard to keep up with what's And so what is, I would ask this to every institution, if I were a reviewer, what is your plan? What is your plan? And how are you systematically addressing whatever's coming up at your campus with AI? It's very similar to... the kinds of questions that have come up in the past around online learning quality, right? It's in the same kind of vein and institutions have a plan for that.

35:37So, well, it was great having you as a guest. First, I want to thank you for your involvement in accreditation work as a peer reviewer. The guidance you provide to institutions creates opportunities for campuses to demonstrate the value of higher education.

35:40Well, thank you.

35:53Capitalize on their institution's strengths and address weaknesses through the application of best practices. I know that accreditation in the last year has become a hot topic and who could have ever anticipated that? But it's so very important as a vehicle to drive organizational effectiveness and support student success, which is really the most important thing. It's what we are all here for.

36:18Great.

36:18And to our listeners, thanks for joining us for another episode of Data Stakes. Data Stakes is sponsored by the Data Analytics Alliance for Higher Education. And you can visit our website to learn more about our upcoming quarterly meeting. If you have any questions about today's conversation, don't hesitate to reach out to me, dfelps at Datatelligent.ai. Hey, we'll see you in a couple weeks. Thanks.

36:44Thank you.