Accreditation team reports findings

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“We’ve come to know you. We’ve come to have a sense that the Brahma spirit is alive here. This is a good college doing really good work with students,” Garcia said. “The most frequent phrase [heard during the interviews was]. ‘I love this place. It’s like home.’”

In addition to the three recommendations, Garcia imparted several commendations to the faculty, staff and administration present during the exit report--an agreeable college climate and culture, the success of the Summer Bridge Program, and an improved library website, to name a few.

Paula Paggi, head of the library department, says that the new library website was discussed during her interview with team member Kim Morrison.

“We were really excited [when the website was recognized],” Paggi said.

Now that the visit is over, the team will be reporting their findings in an evaluation report to the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges. The ACCJC, in turn, will be meeting in June in order to discuss how to move forward with the accreditation status of Pierce.

The college will be notified of any additional apprehension to the way the school is being run, as well as whether or not Pierce will be reaffirming their accreditation, according to an email circulated by Burke-Kelly following the exit report.

In the meantime, Pierce will continue making improvements to its system, said Mia Wood, faculty accreditation coordinator.

“It never ends,” she said. “What we try to do is integrate [the recommendations] into existing procedure.”

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Mission College, another LA Community College District school that was visited by an accreditation team this March, was found to have issues with “significant gaps sometimes between policy and practice” because its leadership has been turned over so many times, according to Michael Rota, the accreditation team chair.

“It’s hard to maintain continuity and quality with that level of turnover,” Rota said in a video recording of Mission College’s accreditation team’s exit report.

Other recommendations made to Mission College also include putting in place an appeal process for student discipline and program review or assessment of their student learning outcomes.

Pierce and LA Mission College, along with LA Valley College, were the three LACCD campuses that were visited by accreditation teams this year. LA Harbor College, LA Southwest College and West LA College, on the other hand, were visited by teams last year; while all three reaffirmed their accreditation, Harbor and Southwest were put on probation and West LA was issued a warning.

The next set of visits--for East LA College, LA CIty College and LA Trade-Tech College--will take place in 2015.