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QEP
Read the Quality Enhancement Plan
The Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) is the component of the accreditation process that reflects and affirms the commitment of the Commission on Colleges to the enhancement of the quality of higher education and to the proposition that student learning is at the heart of the mission of all institutions of higher learning. By definition, the QEP describes a carefully designed course of action that addresses a well-defined and focused topic or issue related to enhancing student learning. The QEP should be embedded within the institution’s ongoing integrated institution-wide planning and evaluation process and may very well evolve from this existing process or from other processes related to the institution’s internal reaffirmation review.
Developing a QEP as a part of the reaffirmation process is an opportunity for the institution to enhance overall institutional quality and effectiveness by focusing on an issue or issues the institution considers important to improving student learning. Responding to this reaffirmation requirement may also provide an impetus for focusing critical and creative energy. Institutions report that the QEP “has caused us to become much more intentional and focused about an important element of our mission” and “helped us put in motion our creativity.”
Institutional Feedback:
“The deadline and requirement for developing a QEP as part of our SACS reaffirmation served as a crucial motivator in translating vision into reality. We are much farther along our chosen path than we would be otherwise.” (Level IV institution, Class of 2005)
Institutional Feedback: “For achieving the focus, it lends us the benefit of having made a promise to an external body that has a firm deadline.” (Level III institution, Class of 2006)
While the Compliance Certification focuses on the past and the present, the QEP looks to the future. Core Requirement 2.12 requires an institution to develop a plan for increasing the effectiveness of some aspect of its educational program relating to student learning.
Core Requirement 2.12: The institution has developed an acceptable Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) that (1) includes a broad-based institutional process identifying key issues emerging from institutional assessment, (2) focuses on learning outcomes and/or the environment supporting student learning and accomplishing the mission of the institution, (3) demonstrates institutional capability for the initiation, implementation, and completion of the QEP, (4) includes broad-based involvement of institutional constituencies in the development and proposed implementation of the QEP, and (5) identifies goals and a plan to assess their achievement.
This requirement launches a process that can move an institution into a future characterized by the development and/or modification of creative, engaging, and meaningful learning experiences for students.
Peer Evaluator’s Perspective: Has the institution provided a comprehensive and clear analysis of the crucial importance of the QEP for improving the learning environment?
Student Learning Defined. Within the context of the QEP as a requirement for reaffirmation, the Commission on Colleges broadly defines student learning as changes in
Within the context of their own particular Quality Enhancement Plans, member institutions must specify realistic, measurable student learning outcomes appropriate for their focused topic. Peer evaluators do not hesitate to write recommendations demanding that institutions “provide clearly defined student learning outcomes that lead to observable results.”
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