Minutes of the AILG Accreditation Committee Attending: Herman Marshall, Bob Ferrara, John Covert, Steve Carhart, Kim Hunter, Brad Badgley 11/7/16 1- Status of reviews The Theta Xi report is pending a review by the AILG Board. Others are awaiting comments from the reviewed FSILG. Upcoming reviews still need some reviewers. 2- Accreditation Annual Report John has all the pieces for the report but should wait for verification that the rubric. John will verify with Ernie Sabine that the current rubric figures and data are in good shape. 3- Progress on requests and suggestions from the AILG Board a- Volunteer training: We agreed to support volunteer education events. There is still no volunteer education event planned yet. b- Provide a statement of purpose to reviewers: We previously agreed to support volunteer training where possible by providing more of an overview at reviews and by providing an overview at a plenary. Herman provided an overview at the September plenary meeting. Bob will be a reviewer on Dec. 3 and will provide a high level overview of the goals of Accreditation. Steve and Kim will attend reviews on 12/4 and can perform this function for those reviews. There was a long discussion of concerns from FSILG members (and alumni) that the Accreditation process is not valued and that it seems to consist only of 'checking the boxes.' There were several suggestions as to how to communicate what Accreditation does for the community: - Emphasize that the reviews are conversations among peers to prevent problems - Set the objective as a learning experience - Try to relieve apprehension by lauding best practices - Treat the BDF as a series of warning flags for treatable problems - Consider an analogy for students that it a reservation is like a '5th week flag', not a failure but an indicator of a correctable situation c- Set up a review where the FSILG office may attend: John will continue to check which living groups would be willing to have an FSILG staff member in attendance. None have been identified. d- Coordinate data transfer with the FSILG office: Brad is working an issue concerning legal anonymity. There will soon be a new hire in the FSILG office that could help move things along. 4- Report for the Plenary We want to emphasize that we could widen the demographic representation on the committee and work on issues raised in item 3b (above). 5- Review of data in FSILG tax returns It was agreed that the Accreditation review teams should ensure that the tax filings are current so as to avoid IRS penalties but there is no obligation to review the specific data therein. However, each team can decide what it worthy of review. 6- BDF petition 7- Next meeting: 12/19/16 at 3PM.