CUI’s School of Business recently received specialized accreditation
from a business accreditor, International Accreditation Council for Business Education (IACBE) and became the first school in the world
to earn the IACBE’s specialized accounting accreditation.
“There were six or seven pilot schools and we jumped first and
swam faster,” says George Wright, administrative dean of the
School of Business.
Accreditation by the IACBE is additional to and separate from WASC
accreditation. It is tied to student outcomes and making sure institutions
are making regular improvements in their educational offerings.
One reason Wright and Deborah Lee, director of CUI’s institutional
research and assessment, pursued this additional accreditation is
“to validate what we’re doing,” Wright says. “You can become too
myopic and pat yourself on the back. We wanted some external
eyes on what we’re doing to help us rate ourselves. It gives us a
chance to compare ourselves to other schools.”
Wright, Lee and faculty members created a systematic process
to assess their syllabi, student learning outcomes and curriculum
maps. The accreditation covers the undergraduate business and
economics majors and the MBA program, and commits the School
of Business to continuous improvement in learning outcomes,
hiring and pedagogy.
“It’s the most significant thing we’ve done in the last five years,” Wright says. “When our students walk in the door [to interview
for a job] they’re coming from a school that stands with the best
of them. We’re a peer.”
"When our students walk in the door [to interview
for a job] they’re coming from a school that stands with the best
of them."
The School of Business is flourishing in a number of ways. This
summer the MBA program had its five hundredth graduate. Business
is the largest undergraduate major and added three new programs
in the past five years: economics, international business, and business
data and analytics.
Maintaining additional independent accreditation encourages
collaboration between faculty members, and the faculty and
administration.
“This gives more meaning to our degree and shows we are more
rigorous compared to other institutions,” Lee says.