The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges has reaffirmed the accreditation for Mississippi State University for the next decade.
MSU’s reaffirmation came without recommendations for improvement from the commission. The reaccreditation was announced at SACSCOC’s annual meeting last week in Nashville, Tennessee.
SACSCOC is the recognized regional accrediting body in the 11 U.S. Southern states for those institutions of higher education that award associate, baccalaureate, master’s or doctoral degrees.
MSU President Mark E. Keenum, who in 2012 began serving a three-year term on the SACSCOC Executive Council, said he was “extremely pleased” with the reaffirmation and praised the university team that spearheaded the successful two-year SACSCOC review process.
The process included an extremely productive three-day site visit by a SACSCOC peer review committee to the MSU campus that was featured in an April story in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
“The committee was impressed during their visit to the MSU campus and that is reflected in its report,” said Keenum. “Receiving reaffirmation with no recommendations for improvement is a very high honor for our university.
“I am proud of the outstanding efforts put forth by Dr. Tim Chamblee and his team and the work of our faculty and staff over a long review period. This is great news and speaks highly of the institution and its mission of advancing higher education in Mississippi as this state’s flagship research university,” he added.
As a member of the executive council of the SACSCOC Board of Trustees, Keenum recused himself from the vote on MSU’s accreditation.
The fact that MSU’s accreditation was reaffirmed without recommendations “is a real tribute to the administration and leadership of the university, but also to the hundreds of individual faculty and staff members who are charged with implementing the daily operations of the university and interacting with our students,” Chamblee said.
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