AUB began its reaccreditation project in January 2007, with the creation of two committees, the Self-Study Design Committee and the Self-Study Steering Committee, which worked together to develop a new Self-Study Design. This document guided the members of the eight working groups – one for each chapter – as they investigated AUB’s continuing progress in meeting the fourteen standards of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) and the goals set by the University in 2004 for the achievement of its educational mission.
Approximately one hundred and twenty faculty, staff and students gave their time to compile and assess the information found in the 2008 Institutional Self-Study and to make meaningful recommendations for improvement. Many more members of the AUB community assisted in this process by providing data, participating in focus groups and completing the institutional survey. The introduction to the Self-Study describes all of the steps taken to complete the final draft.
In January 2009, two years after work commenced, the Self-Study Steering Committee approved the final document. It was submitted to MSCHE and a designated team of experts who visited Beirut to verify the contents before writing their own report. The visiting team’s report made numerous suggestions and two recommendations that reinforced the findings of the 2008 Institutional Self-Study. It was therefore in complete accord with AUB’s own understanding of the next steps that it must take to meet its strategic goal of institutional renewal.
On 25 June 2009, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education voted to reaffirm AUB’s accreditation. In a letter announcing its decision, MSCHE requested that the University submit two documents over the next five years: first, a monitoring report documenting AUB's "implementation of an organized and sustained assessment process to evaluate and improve student learning" (due 1 April 2011); and, second, a periodic review report indicating its overall progress in meeting its goals and objectives (due 1 June 2014). AUB’s next full accreditation cycle will take place in 2018-19.
AUB's 2011 Monitoring Report
AUB’s 2008 Institutional Self-Study
To see what the report and its appendices contain before opening or downloading these files, click here to view the Table of Contents.
Some Reports Mentioned in the 2008 Self-Study
The 2008 Institutional Self-Study contains passing references to a handful of reports that had not previously been posted on the University website. In most cases, these documents were deemed too long for inclusion in the Appendices, so they appear here:
Another source of vital importance to every chapter in the Self-Study was the 2008 Institutional Survey, which is usually compared to the 2002-03 Institutional Survey.
An Excel file with a comprehensive list of source materials consulted when researching the Self-Study appears under Documents.