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As part of the reaccreditation process, a visiting team from the New England Association for Schools and Colleges (NEASC) will be on campus November 12-15 in order to evaluate multiple facets of the university, including: mission and purposes, planning and evaluation, organization and governance, financial resources, the faculty, the overall academic program, library and information resources, students, integrity, public disclosure, and physical and technological resources. The actual evaluation will occur on November 13 and 14.

They will be evaluating how well the University performs according to eleven specific standards, said Provost and Senior Vice-President for Academic Affairs Marty Krauss. Overall, they will be interested in learning about how we insure quality to our academic programs, provide a first class experience for students, manage our financial and physical resources, support the work of our faculty and staff, and address issues in higher education that are important for the 21st century.

Krauss also stated that the team will be assessing the progress the University has made on specific issues that were of concern to the team that visited us in 1996, the last time that Brandeis was evaluated. Over the course of eighteen months, Brandeis compiled a 136 page self-study, which was submitted in September and shows how the university organized fourteen committees that worked over the past year and a half to prepare analyses and responses to each of the eleven standards that we will be judged on, said Krauss.

The visiting team is composed of nine members of various area universities that are peers of Brandeis, including New York University, Brown, Tufts, and Dartmouth. The members are both administrators and professors, and each one is assigned to evaluate one or more of the eleven NEASC standards. We have organized a very intensive two day visit for the team, who will meet with many different groups across the campus, noted Krauss. In short, there has been a massive effort expended to prepare for this visit.

Heading the team is Dr. John Sexton, President of New York University, who said that the teams role is to look at the institution through the self-study, other documents that are provided, and on-campus interviews, and to examine whether and how the institution meets the NEASC Standards for Accreditation in light of its mission. He also added that as colleagues, we also hope to provide some advice on any issues which may have been raised in the self-study.

In closing, Krauss expressed that she is very pleased with the self-study. We said from the beginning that we would be reflective, candid, and uphold high standards for ourselves. We did that. She added that the self-study is a very comprehensive review of who, what, and where Brandeis University is now, and how we got here over the last ten years. I would strongly urge everyone in the Brandeis community to spend time reading the report and learning a great deal about what Brandeis stands for, its academic programs, how it is managed, and what we aspire to in the future. The self-study is available at http://www.brandeis.edu/neasc/selfstudy.html.