SACSCOC removes ‘warning’ from UTEP’s accreditation status

by Daniel Perez, El Paso Matters
December 5, 2023

Update, Dec. 7, 10 a.m.: This story has been updated with additional comments.

The University of Texas at El Paso announced Tuesday morning that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges has lifted the warning status it placed on UTEP’s accreditation.

“This weekend the board formally accepted our response and the warning status was removed,” wrote UTEP Provost John Wiebe in an email to university faculty and staff.

SACSCOC’s Board of Trustees issued the sanction last summer after it decided that UTEP had not provided enough documentation in five areas: full-time faculty, program length and qualified administrative/academic officers, as well as program faculty and program coordination. The board called it “significant non-compliance.”

Wiebe’s email went on to stress that at no time in the process did the accreditation agency request that UTEP make any changes to how it operates, and added that its decision affirms the university’s academic quality.

Accreditation is important to a higher education institution because it ensures an acceptable level of quality, provides access to state and federal funding, and makes it easier to transfer credits.

Belle Wheelan, SACSCOC president, said she was excited for UTEP.

“I know they worked hard to come back into compliance with our standards and will continue to remain in compliance going forward,” Wheelan said.

Andrew Fleck, president of UTEP’s Faculty Senate, said professors and instructors were concerned that the university had not put its best foot forward initially in the process, but were pleased that the university’s responses helped SACSCOC to understand how the institution meets its goal of offering an enriching education to its students.

The university submitted its response to SACSCOC in September. It answered each concern and included a lot of backup material to include UTEP’s Handbook of Operating Procedures and its 2,622-page 2021-22 catalog.

“We know that we do good work and want to make sure those who evaluate us understand how effectively we do it,” Fleck said. “I think most people understood this hiccup as a disconnect in communication that would be clarified when additional information was submitted.”

This was the second time in five years that the agency issued a warning status, the lightest sanction possible, against UTEP. At that time, a lack of qualified full-time faculty also was an issue.

Fleck, an associate professor of English, said that his colleagues would appreciate more full-time faculty to serve the students and keep them on their academic paths. He said UTEP is in the process of recruiting a significant number of full-time colleagues, but did not mention a figure.

“The move toward employing talented colleagues in part-time roles is a long term trend in higher education, but UTEP is fortunate to have excellent colleagues in its part-time ranks,” Fleck said. 

This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.