Southeast Arkansas College officials say the campus has met all standards and substandards toward removing itself from probation with the Higher Learning Commission next summer, although two of the substandards are said to be “met with concerns.”
Donna Hunnicutt, the college’s vice president of instruction, updated the SEARK board during its Wednesday meeting on SEARK’s status more than a month after members of the HLC, the accrediting body for many postsecondary institutions across the country, visited the Pine Bluff campus.
The commission placed SEARK on a two-year probation in June 2024 after it determined the college was out of compliance with three accreditation requirements, including “persistence, retention and completion outcomes,” “effective governance and administrative structures” and “systematic and integrated planning and improvement.” Those findings were determined following a midterm visit by the commission.
“There were subcategories of a criterion, and they had to do with our online instruction and the amount of data we collected,” Hunnicutt said when asked what substandards were met with concerns. “They anticipate you having multiple rounds of data and having gone through a whole process of the data collection. When we did a hard reset on everything, we did not have that data.”
SEARK President Tyrone Jackson clarified the data was related to the college’s assessment process.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“We need enough time to collect enough data to do a comparative analysis of where we are and where we started from,” Jackson said.
“It has been a collaborative effort among each employee at this institution. They all bought into this process.”
Faculty members began meeting every first Friday to learn about the HLC standards shortly into Jackson’s tenure, then started to meet each Friday, he said.
Employees from other institutions in Arkansas visited SEARK to conduct mock visits to prepare SEARK faculty for the HLC’s follow-up visit.
SEARK addressed the online instruction concern by having online instructors go through professional development, which Hunnicutt said includes Quality Matters certification.
“Quality Matters is the gold-standard benchmark for a teacher online,” Hunnicutt said.
“We also developed some in-house webinars they can do. … It really is, basically, understanding what online instruction is supposed to be, that it is still interaction with your students. It is still teaching with your students and not just saying, ‘Here’s the assignment’ and them turning it back in. That’s not what we had happening, but we weren’t just quite to that next level. This is going to move us exponentially up in our quality of instruction.
“Our faculty is already a good faculty. This is just going to make them that much better.”
Jackson was hired July 1, 2024, and said he learned the college was officially placed on probation on his second day on the job.
Jackson serves on the board for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on College, and he said that body’s accreditation process is similar to the HLC’s in many ways.
Jackson hired Hunnicutt in October 2024 to serve as SEARK’s liaison to the HLC.
Hunnicutt has primarily been charged with educating all staff members on its accreditation process and new requirements for removing the college from probation.
“A lot of work has gone into the process these last 16 months,” Jackson said. “We have worked day and night, and I feel like we’re in a pretty good position. We’ve met all the standards, a couple of them with some concerns that we somewhat anticipated.”
SEARK officials will report to the commission’s Institutional Action Council in April at a Chicago Hilton hotel to recommend the college be removed from probation.
The council will determine whether to take SEARK off probation and the substandards met with concerns can officially be substandards met.
Hunnicutt said she knows of only one or two times that the council has gone against the recommendation of a team representing a college on probation and made the outcome worse than intended.
“Our hope is that we can at least get the online instruction piece to be met and only have one (substandard) met with concern,” Hunnicutt said.
The validity of degrees and transferability of credits from an unaccredited college may come into question, but SEARK has remained accredited through its probation.
Jackson said SEARK is heading in the right direction with the HLC’s most recent feedback.
“The thing about accreditation is that there never really is a finish line,” Hunnicutt said. “When they walk out the door after the visit, you start preparing for the next visit. That’s what keeps institutions out of trouble, is that they prepare all along. When you have a small window in which you prepare, that’s what causes people to get in trouble.”
