2020 Higher Learning Commission (HLC) Focused Visit
Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College has held continuous accreditation by The Higher Learning Commission (HLC) since 1971.
In October 2017, Southern submitted its Assurance Argument to the Commission for a Team to conduct an Assurance Review as part of the Open Pathway process. Given that this was a distance Assurance Review, the Team did not plan an on-site visit to interview constituents. During a request for additional documentation the team requested in order to complete the report, a brief telephone interview with then President Robert Gunter was conducted. The Peer Review Team determined that an on-site visit was in order to clarify core component concerns. On February 5-6, 2018, the visiting team of three members conducted a special on-site visit to verify and validate identified concerns. The Team identified several areas of concern primarily with regards to co-curricular assessment, persistence and completion, faculty credentials, shared governance and planning. In their Final Report, the Peer Review Team identified four core components that were "met with concerns." In order to address the four areas as being "met with concerns," Southern will host a HLC Focused Visit on March 2-3, 2020. A Focused Visit basically consists of a small team of peer reviewers who will visit Southern to determine whether the institution has fully and appropriately addressed those four areas of concern. Along with the focused visit, the college is expected to produce a focus report demonstrating that we have addressed each of the four areas that are "met with concerns."
This website will provide information to the college and community about the focused visit process as it progresses and culminates with the team visit by the HLC evaluators in March 2020. You are invited to visit this site regularly for focused visit news and updates.
As a part of the focused visit process, all college employees were provided an opportunity to contribute to Southern’s Focused Visit Report by providing comments regarding Criterion 2a, 4b, 4c, and/or 5b that they believed described how we as an institution are meeting the Higher Learning Commission’s areas of concern as expressed in the 2018 Peer Review Team Final Report.
2020 HLC Focused Report (Draft Version 11-04-2019) Comments due by 11-18-2019
2020 HLC Focused Report (Draft Version 11-18-2019) Correction of facts due by 12-05-2019
2020 HLC Focused Report (Draft Version 12-05-2019) Correction of facts due by 12-12-2019
