Spring 2025 has been a season of accreditation visits for the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. Higher education accreditation, whether of a program or the institution, is a peer-driven process. Members of other universities and public/professional sector representatives pay periodic visits to campuses to assess the quality of programs, and, most importantly, to help us improve.
Much preparation goes into preparing for such visits, as accreditors ask to see information about enrollment, student success, campus culture, budgets, etc. Written reports are prepared, visits scheduled, and multiple meetings with the assigned teams take place on the campus. The visit team gives the campus a preliminary oral report followed in a few weeks by a written report. The campus then reviews the report for accuracy (names, places, data, etc.) and is encouraged to write a response. Lastly, there is a council or commission that renders a decision about the status of the program and how long it will be before the reaffirmation of that accreditation needs to take place. The longer the better, from the perspective of the university. These final decisions generally come out a few months after the visit, meaning that the entire process can take a year to accomplish.
The recommendations we get from our peers are helpful as we try to move our university forward, better serve students, and keep our programs up-to-date and relevant to student and employer needs.
UH Hilo has several accredited programs: Nursing, education, pharmacy, and business are the principal ones. This semester alone, we have had visits from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB); Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE); and for our campus as a whole, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges’ Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC).
AACSB “accredit[s] the best business schools in the world and unite[s] the brightest minds in business education for positive societal impact.” UH Hilo is rightly proud of the fact that it is one of only two institutions in Hawaiʻi with an AACSB accreditation, the other being UH Mānoa. Being accredited by AACSB is a symbol of the excellence of our program, the quality of our faculty, and the support our university gives the program and our students. An AACSB team visited the campus in March, and we are awaiting the final assessment, but the visit went very well, and we are already discussing recommendations made by the team. Our business program has seen a healthy rebound in enrollment since the pandemic, and college director Todd Inouye is leading the unit through a number of important initiatives.
In early April, we had a visit from ACPE for the Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy. “ACPE accreditation is public recognition that a professional degree program leading to the Doctor of Pharmacy degree is judged to meet established qualifications and education standards through initial and subsequent periodic evaluations.“ This visit also went very well, and the team made good recommendations to our College of Pharmacy for us to follow up on. The faculty and staff are working well with the dean, Rae Matsumoto, to increase enrollment and to continue to implement their new curriculum.
Finally, our institution had a special visit from WSCUC in the last week of April. They are our institutional accreditor, as well as the accreditor of our sister campuses at Mānoa, West Oʻahu, and Maui. “WSCUC pursues excellence through rigorous accreditation standards applied flexibly, empowering all its member institutions to achieve their missions.” Special visits take place when a previous visiting team identifies issues of concern with the campus. WSCUC was looking at our enrollment, our budget (which relies in part on our enrollment), and our future strategic direction. This visit also went quite well, as UH Hilo now has a dedicated strategic plan, a strategic enrollment management plan, and a multi-year budget plan. The campus has come together to create these forward-looking plans, and the work of implementation is before us.
I am grateful for all the hard work of our campus community on our plans, in preparing for visits, and following up on all the good ideas that are generated when we have these visits. While the team recommendations are important, perhaps even more important is how the visits oblige us to take the time and space to reflect on our university, the work we do, and what we can continue to improve in the ways we serve our students and broader community.
With aloha,
Bonnie D. Irwin