Accreditation team to evaluate Winthrop’s programs, departments

By Jonathan McFadden

mcfaddenj@mytjnow.com

Winthrop students will be instrumental in a successful SACS visit next week, said several faculty and staff members who are readying themselves for the visit that will start Monday.

From April 4-6, members of the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges will be on campus analyzing and assessing Winthrop’s programs and academic departments to make sure they fall in line with SACS’ requirements.

If Winthrop meets the standards, the university is guaranteed renewed accreditation. 

If Winthrop falls short, then upcoming graduates won’t be able to boast completion of their degree at an accredited institution.

Even worse, as far as GLI director Karen Kedrowski knows, the university will have to shut its doors if not fully accredited. 

Each university under SACS is expected to have a viable quality enhancement plan. Winthrop’s is GLI—the Global Learning Initiative.  

The initiative represents a multiple-pronged effort to encourage students to study abroad while incorporating a global focus into the Touchstone Program set of classes and other courses at the university. 

Part of the plan includes identifying study abroad programs in each major that’ll permit students to study abroad and still graduate on time, and increasing the number of global learning cultural events.

“It communicates that Winthrop is really a part of the world,” Kedrowski said. 

So, where do students come in?

Chances are SACS visitors may randomly ask some students what GLI is, its purpose and Winthrop’s definition of “global.”

“We mean any experience that’s local, regional, national and/or international that may different from one’s own culture,” Kedrowski said.

Activities ranging from volunteer work on Blackmon Road to doing internships with international companies in Charlotte to eating at a Haitian restaurant all constitute a global learning experience, Kedrowski said.

Currently, GLI is in its implementation phase, said Dante Pelzer, director of multicultural student life and member of GLI’s promotions committee.

Even though GLI hasn’t yet been officially approved, global integration into ACAD is already taking place.

The fall’s ACAD students will work on a global service-learning project that requires them to develop book tents, where they would give out and donate books to children in low-income families, on campus and in the surrounding community.

The reaccreditation process didn’t just start this spring. In fact, the university has already submitted several compliance reports to SACS’ off-site team, who have returned the reports without too much revisions or questions. 

When SACS’ on-site team arrives on campus, their primary goal will be to review GLI, Pelzer said. That’s why it’s essential the entire campus community knows what GLI is and why it’s important.

“They [SACS team members] may talk to you,” Pelzer said.

Once the SACS accrediting team visits campus and reviews GLI, they’ll give their final stamp of approval and further implementation can take place.

Then the real work begins.

Once the plan’s in place, the freshman experience will be affected most with dramatic changes made in ACAD and HMXP.

More than that, faculty who have been involved with GLI are searching for peer mentors who’ve traveled or lived abroad.

Students will also be encouraged to sponsor global cultural events that will give a non-US perspective, Kedrowski said. 

Go yonder, WU students 

Permitting more students to study abroad is one of the program’s biggest objectives, Kedrowski said.

Only two to three percent of Winthrop students study abroad. The GLI committee’s job is to access why the low percentage.

“It might be financial concerns, it might be concerns that students end up falling behind in their academic programs, it might be family worries about the safety of 

going to certain regions of the country,” Kedrowski said. 

Members of GLI will figure out what stops students interested in studying abroad from doing so and help them overcome those barriers, she said. 

GLI will also look to identify scholarships that would help support students studying abroad. 

Junior political science and economics double major Timothy Kroboth knows how important GLI is for the student body.

In a rapidly globalizing world, college graduates will encounter people whose cultural background is extremely different from their own, Kroboth said. 

Kroboth has firsthand experience with different cultures, having studied abroad in Cairo, Egypt and participated in the National Student Exchange at the University of Kentucky.