Provost explains probationary status

On Wednesday, UTRGV administrators met with officials from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to discuss the details of the 10 accrediting standards the university violated.

Provost Havidán Rodríguez was one of the university administrators who went to Atlanta to meet with officials from SACSCOC, the regional body for the accreditation of degree-granting higher education institutions in the Southern states.

“We knew the letter was coming in and, so, we wanted to discuss these issues face-to-face with the [SACSCOC] staff,” Rodríguez told The Rider earlier today. “They had their executive team there. They were very pleased to see us arrive at [SACSCOC]. We didn’t have to be there but being there was a great demonstration of our interest and commitment to working with them in moving the institution forward and lifting the probationary status.”

Rodríguez said SACSCOC officials reassured them the academic quality of UTRGV was not affected or related to the school’s probationary status.

“[SACSCOC] was very clear. The academic programs, academic credentials, degrees, etc., of UTRGV are not in jeopardy,” he said. “We are fully accredited and we have excellent academic, rigorous programs.”

The issue was the transition period during Fall 2015, specifically the separation of UT Brownsville and Texas Southmost College and the latter’s delayed accreditation, the provost said.

As previously reported by The Rider, the accreditation standards UTRGV failed to meet are the following:

–Integrity (Principle 1.1)

–Acceptance of academic credits (Comprehensive standard 3.4.4)

–Consortial relationships/contractual agreements (Comprehensive standard 3.4.7)

–Institutional credits for a degree (Comprehensive standard 3.5.2)

–Institutional credits for a graduate degree (Comprehensive standard 3.6.3)

–Financial aid audits (Comprehensive standard 3.10.2)

–Substantive change (Comprehensive standard 3.12.1)

–Advertising, Student Recruitment, and Representation of Accredited Status policy compliance, (Comprehensive standard 3.13)

–Publication of accreditation status (Comprehensive standard 3.14.1)

–Recruitment materials (Federal requirement 4.6)

On Wednesday, UTRGV received a letter from SACSCOC stating that “the documentation submitted indicates that the [university] failed to provide timely and accurate information to the Commission, and/or failed to conduct a candid self-assessment of compliance with the Principles of Accreditation and to submit this assessment to the Commission. This is viewed as lack of full commitment to integrity.”

Rodríguez said he and the other UTRGV administrators asked SACSCOC officials for a clearer explanation of the violation.

“So, we asked, ‘What is it that you’re referring to?’ … It refers to we, the university, referring to ourselves as, ‘Two campuses, one journey,’” he said. “[SACSCOC] was saying, ‘That’s actually a misrepresentation of the university,’ and we [asked] why. They said, ‘Because it’s actually, two campuses, five universities, one journey.’”

The provost said SACSCOC officials explained that the university should have represented itself as UT Pan American, UTB, UTB/TSC, TSC and UTRGV.

“When [SACSCOC] refers to the assessment of who we are, and that we did not represent that accurately, that is one of the issues, or a couple of the issues they are referring to,” Rodríguez said.

In order to resolve this violation, the commission is asking UTRGV to “provide evidence of corrective communications with all constituencies to demonstrate honest and open communication in its actions as well as a copy of its internal procedures for public release of institutional information, the person/offices responsible for its accuracy and the chief executive’s role, if any, in attesting to accuracy.”

The letter also states that an administrative decision was made to automatically enroll students from UTB into the UTRGV student information system. The action resulted in all students enrolled in courses on the Brownsville campus being classified as continuing UTRGV students.

SACSCOC wrote in its letter that the process occurred without a clear, corresponding process to evaluate the quality and integrity of the credit recorded on UTRGV’s transcript.

“If you look at the process that we went through, UTPA was renamed UTRGV, waiting for the situation with UTB/TSC to be resolved,” Rodríguez said. “It’s about timeline. We expected that in December 2014, TSC would go up for accreditation. Then we thought it was going to happen in June of 2015. When it did not happen in June of 2015, remember that the [UT System] board of regents … determined that UTRGV would be established in Aug. 31, 2015, we still couldn’t pull in UTB into the mixture because UTB was still UTB/TSC.”

If UTB had been separated from TSC before the college received its accreditation, the Education Department would not have been able to award financial aid to all the students that remained at TSC, the provost said.

“We did not want to impact the students, so we had to delay our process as well,” he said. “That’s where the issue emerges. Certainly, the UTB students were already taking courses from UTRGV in the fall of 2015. So, as a consequence in that transition, that’s what created this issue.”

UTRGV did not provide SACSCOC with a copy of its 2015-16 financial aid audit, according to the letter from the commission. The audit is needed to document that the disbursement of aid to students on the Brownsville campus was in compliance.

Asked why the audit was not provided to the commission, Rodríguez replied: “Very simple, because the audit was just completed. We get the audit report in late January or by mid-February and as soon as the report is done, we will submit it. There was no audit report to submit. We were just audited by the Department of Education, as all institutions are, and so, the report has not come in. So, we don’t have something to submit to [SACSCOC] but as soon as we get the report, we submit it to [SACSCOC]; that issue goes away.”

In a phone interview with The Rider earlier today, state Rep. René Oliveira (D-Brownsville) said he was glad the commission  did not find anything substantive.

“It seems that the issues all revolve around the breakup of UTB … and Texas Southmost College and it seems to be issues of transition and adjustment rather than any substance of violations,” Oliveira said. “My understanding is that a small amount of students may have gotten a degree from one of the institutions when it should have been another institution, and that can certainly be corrected. But, most of the issues were, or almost all the issues seem to me to revolve around these transition issues and not any gross violation of conduct, trust or academics.”

UTRGV was created by the Texas Legislature in 2013 and opened in August 2015.

Oliveira said he does not believe the creation of UTRGV was rushed.

“This is a process that took a couple of years,” he said. “There was no rush and, frankly, the sooner the better. … The Legislature is not involved in those day-to-day issues. All we do is pass the law and get the funding and [UTRGV has] to implement that themselves. So, if there were any mistakes, then it has nothing to do with the Legislature.”

In December 2017, UTRGV will be reviewed by SACSCOC’s board of trustees, which will consider the accreditation status of the university following review of a monitoring report submitted by the institution, no later than Sept. 8, addressing the standards cited for non-compliance, and the report of a special committee that will visit the institution in October.

“UTRGV remains a fully accredited institution,” Rodríguez said. “None of the other [education] programs are impacted by this. … SACSCOC staff reiterated this and so, our degrees awarded, our diplomas, etc., they are valid. … We continue to move forward as an institution. We are strongly committed to work with SACSCOC to resolve these issues and we strongly believe that we will resolve these issues.”

–Monika Garza contributed to this report.