College submits accreditation report

In response to the early 2009 "warning" issued by the Accreditation Commission of Community and Junior Colleges (AACJC) and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), Rio Hondo submitted the much anticipated Follow-up Report on Oct 15.

By submitting the 54 page report, Rio Hondo has effectively complied with all requests made by the governing body and the college should be removed from "warning" status and placed on "Reaffirmed Accreditation" status by the spring semester in 2010.

In effort to verify the validity of the findings by Rio Hondo staff documented in the Follow-up Report, a two-member team consisting of Dr. John Gonzales and Dr. Jerry Patton (from AACJC) made a repeat visit to the campus on Oct 5.

The team met with various groups who participated in composition of the Follow-Up Report. Preliminarily, the AACJC is expected to respond to Rio Hondo by the end of November, but the official report will not be released until in January.

The report and the work that went into its completion has been a long ordeal, dating back to when the AACJC and WASC first visited the Rio Hondo campus in Oct 2008, and discovered areas the college needed to improve upon.

The recommendations handed down to Rio Hondo were in the areas, Institutional Effectiveness, Governance, Student Learning Outcomes and Services, Human Resources and Leadership.

Rio Hondo President Dr. Ted Martinez said the administration wasted no time preparing in response to the recommendations handed down by the AACJC, "As soon as they left, we had already begun the process of putting together a team and it came to be called the Accreditation Response Team [ART]."

Some of the improvements listed in the Rio Hondo Follow-Up Report: a comprehensive review of Student Services, General Education, Basic Skills, Degrees and Certificate Programs; a new code of ethics for all Rio Hondo employees and a revision of the hiring process and new campus-wide climate surveys in order to improve governance and work approval.

But the recommendation that required the most attention was the refinement of planning process to insure Institutional Goals and Objectives.

Dr. Martinez indicated, "We were operating on an ongoing basis, but we didn't have the infrastructure for planning.The largest area was the planning process and how we link program review, resource allocation and planning together."

ART co-chair Joanna Downey said, "We now have a program planning mechanism.one of the things they [AACJC] wanted to see is better linkages between everything from our goals and objectives for each department; how that's linked to division; how that's linked to the campus; how's that's linked to student learning outcomes; how that's linked to student services.everything has to have sort of a big umbrella under planning and everything has to link to resources."

With the new guidelines and policies in place, Rio Hondo College stands fully committed to staying one step ahead in matters that involve its accreditation status.

Marketing and Communications Director Susan Herney indicated, "Accreditation is the guarantee that we give to our community, that we are doing a good job." Regardless of the "warning" status given to the school by the AACJC and WASC, Rio Hondo remains and always has been a fully accredited learning institution.

The warning Rio Hondo received this January is, according to AACJCs website is the least severe on the scale of sanctions issued to all colleges it governs. The units earned at Rio Hondo are still fully transferable and at no time has Financial Aid eligibility ever been at risk to any student.

Dr. Martinez Jr. concluded in his October 2009 Presidential Update, "This report was the product of several months of deliberation and work by campus-wide committees that were formed to address the address the agency's recommendations. We have great confidence in the work of the Accreditation Response Team (ART) as well as the significant input by our Board of Trustees".