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AQIP Information
About AQIP.org
"Launched in July 1999 with a generous grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP) infuses the principles and benefits of continuous improvement into the culture of colleges and universities by providing an alternative process through which an already-accredited institution can maintain its accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission. With AQIP, an institution demonstrates it meets accreditation standards and expectations through sequences of events that align with those ongoing activities that characterize organizations striving to improve their performance."
from: http://www.aqip.org
For information on the Higher Learning Commission's Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP), see http://www.aqip.org.
The 9 AQIP Categories
- Helping Students Learn
- Accomplishing Other Distinctive Objectives
- Understanding Students’ & Other Stakeholders’ Needs
- Valuing People
- Leading & Communicating
- Supporting Institutional Operations
- Measuring Effectiveness
- Planning Continuous Improvement
- Building Collaborative Relationships
These 9 categories are the key processes for measuring and analyzing our institution’s performance within AQIP. The relationships among the 9 categories is depicted at AQIP Categories Diagram * (available in PDF format, 281 KB, 1 pages)
*Note: You must download and install Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™ in order to view and print the AQIP Categories Diagram.
Cycles of Improvement
"AQIP is a quality improvement program and a quality assurance program for higher education organizations. It operates by involving participating institutions in three disctinct cycles that occur simultaneously. Each cycle has a different duration and sequence of distinctive processes."
Every Year: Action
Action Project Updates and Maintenance of Systems Portfolio
"This one-year cycle drive continous improvement by having every AQIP college or university tackle three or four Action Projects that it has chosen, committed to completing in a few months or years, and published in AQIP's on-line Action Project Directory. Organizations can complete Action Projects and begin new ones at any time. Each fall, they provide Action Project Updates to AQIP on the progress of current projects, and AQIP provides written feedback on these reports. Improvements in the processes an institution employs or the performace results it achieves are incorporated into its published Systems Portfolio."
Every Four Years: Strategy
Systems Appraisal and Strategy Forum
"This four-year cycle drives improvement by having every AQIP organization create and maintain and up-to-date Systems Portfolio describing key systesm and processes the organization uses to achieve its goals and the performance results it obtains from them. A Systems Appraisal of the Systems Portfolio provides institutions with written, actionable feedback they can use to create strategies and actions that will move them quickly toward achievement of their goals. Participation in a Strategy Forum drives organizations to use this feedback in shaping new strategies, aligning systems, and creating specific Action Projects."
Every Seven Years: Accreditation
Check-Up Visit and Reaffirmation of Accreditation
"This seven-year cycle reviews evidence from both the action cycles and stragegy cycles, evidence that demonstrated that an AQIP organization continues to comply with the Higher Learning Commission's Criteria for Accreditation - and that continuing its participation in AQIP will result in measurable performance improvement. A Check-Up Visit to the institution a year or two before its Reaffirmation of Accreditation review confirms the improvements it is making as well as the accuracy of the evidence it has provided to AQIP while providing helpful feedback and consultation on specific issues of its choosing."
"New AQIP institutions concentrate their first Strategy Forum on selecting initial Action Projects that will launch their quality initiative with energy. In the three years following this first Strategy Forum, they create their Systems Portfolio. Subsequent Strategy Forums concentrate on using the feedback from the Systems Appraisal to identify broader improvement strategies, while continuing to use Action Projects to implement these strategies."
from: Academic Quality Improvement Program, The Higher Learning Commission
