As students prepare for final exams, the administration is working on completing its own test – the Middle States Commission on Higher Education reaccreditation.

Required of colleges and universities every 10 years, reaccreditation confirms that the university is operating in accordance with the standards of the commission and the U.S. Department of Education.

“It’s like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval,” Associate Provost Marjory Blumenthal said. “It’s a mark of prestige, but also a method of determining federal financial aid.”

This year, Georgetown has opted to follow a custom approach to the accreditation process. Instead of a comprehensive self-study, the university will participate in the new option of evaluation in “selected topics.”

The development of the self-study began in February 2010, and the university is now in the process of the self-evaluation.

University officials feel that 10 of the commission’s 14 standards have been sufficiently achieved based on a comprehensive collection of internal documentation.

Two representatives from the commission reviewed the collection of over 1,400 documents that demonstrate that the university meets the commission’s criteria.

“They said it was the best documentation presentation they had seen, and it could be a model for Middle States,” Blumenthal said.

The remaining four standards – planning, institutional assessment, general education and assessment of student learning – will be evaluated through self-study by administrators, faculty and students.

“I think the contribution our self-study will make to the community will be to provide in one place an integrated discussion of how we do planning at different levels,” Blumenthal said. “Putting that all together will be a contribution to the community even though we’re motivated by an outside group.”

A committee of faculty from the four undergraduate schools is examining the coherence of the general education standards across the four colleges and will remain intact after the accreditation process is over to act as a faculty academic council.

“We didn’t do as good a job as we might have done at explaining why it is we ask students to take these courses, even though we’ve been asking them for over 30 years,” Blumenthal said. “Self-study will provide a more coherent discussion and talk about assessment of how well students are doing.”

A committee led by Swarthmore College President Rebecca Chopp will begin to evaluate Georgetown’s self-study in early April. The Middle States Commission will meet in June to decide whether to grant the university reaccreditation.