REACCREDITED A N D
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The final vote at the 2022 Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications Council meeting in May confirmed the reaccreditation of the Baylor Department of Journalism, Public Relations & New Media for the next six years. Our department met rigorous requirements and is among the top-tier schools in journalism education in the nation. There are 117 schools accredited by ACEJMC; 114 are fully accredited and three are provisional. Accreditation is a voluntary process that requires participating universities to conduct a rigorous self-examination of nine standards—including, curriculum, learning outcomes, diversity, leadership, funding, and resources, Mia Moody-Ramirez, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, said. After completing a self-study, a site visit team of educators and professionals visited in November to assess changes and updates in the department since the last site visit in 2016, Moody-Ramirez said. To improve the overall aesthetics of the department, faculty and staff added new artwork and furnishings in the hallway, classrooms and head office. Each classroom has ergonomic chairs and tables to help facilitate a comfortable, collaborative learning environment. “We’ve been busy since our last self-study and site visit,” Moody-Ramirez said. “Most notably, we improved diversity in curriculum, endowed several new scholarships, reinstated an advisory board and created a Friends of the Department Council.” Since the November site visit, we launched an online M.A. program, and relaunched the American Studies Program (to raise visibility and increase enrollment numbers). On the horizon is an online broadcast sequence, launching in the fall of 2022.
The report from the site visit team included a list of strengths, including faculty operating on all cylinders, student media awards and curriculum updates. Weaknesses emphasized assessment, particularly the lack of values and competences clearly mapped to ACEJMC’s curriculum. “There is a (assessment) plan, but it needs some real specific things to get to mapping,” the site team leader said. “The committee is confident it (unit) will get to that point.” Other strengths: students are comfortable and feel they have a compassionate faculty who make them feel safe; faculty are productive in teaching, scholarship and creative endeavors, especially for their size; faculty have strong connections to their professions, which inform the curriculum, the department chair has the respect of the administration in the college and the greater campus (she provided leadership for notable progress in fundraising, alumni engagement and diversity efforts despite the difficulties brought on by the pandemic); faculty were resilient and remained productive through the pandemic (they were a source of support for the students). Finally, the department has made strides since the last site visit with diversity efforts in its curriculum. Weaknesses: There may be a need for better channels of communication from the chair to the faculty; the facility is lacking; a flexible space for a broadcast studio is going to be critical for the department to be successful with its new broadcast concentration. Finally, the assessment plan lacks clearly defined goals, methods, instruments of measurement (direction on how data is analyzed and reported, and in using this data).
