PINEVILLE – Information released by Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) indicates that the accrediting organization determined at its recent annual meeting to continue Louisiana College on “warning status,” a status SACS placed LC on during its annual meeting in December 2011.
LC remains fully accredited. The warning status means that accreditation, which is determined as part of a 10-year cycle of evaluation and review of all academic institutions, has not been reaffirmed by SACS.
Information on the accrediting organization’s web site indicates that warning status is “less serious of the two sanctions” (the other being probation) and is usually “levied at the earlier stages of institutional review.”
When the warning status was issued a year ago, SACS deemed eleven specific deficiencies in eight categories that needed to be addressed by LC. In issuing the continuation of the current status, SACS found six specific areas in three categories that still needed attention.
In the category of Institutional Effectiveness, LC needs to address some deficiencies related to: Institutional Effectiveness, Educational Programs, Administrative Support Services and Academic and Student Support Services. In the category of Undergraduate Programs LC needs to work on General Education Competencies and in the category of Faculty the school must give attention to Faculty Competence.
“We believe, given the response from the visiting team and the monitoring report, that this SACS response was the best we could hope for,” Dr. Travis Wright, Vice President for Academic Affairs said in an email to faculty reported WildcatsMedia.com, LC’s student publication. “SACS has noted the work we are doing in making positive steps toward compliance. Our priority over the next year is to remedy the remaining issues.”
According to a recent report by the publication Inside Higher Ed, an online source for news relating to higher education, “More than a dozen colleges and universities were either placed or continued on warning [during the SACS Annual Meeting] status which is one step short of probation. The most visible of those is U. Va. [University of Virginia] ….”