The end of the spring semester marked more than the beginning of summer break for Skyline’s Accreditation Steering Committee. With the first draft of the Self Study in hand, the members of the Steering Committee began their summer with heavy reading and critiquing. The draft, which was completed at the end of last spring semester, marks the first major step for this two-year process.”It’s expected that a document like this will go through multiple revisions,” said Donna Bestock, Co-Chair for the Accreditation and Dean of Social Science and Creative Arts. “That’s not to say that there are flaws. It’s a big, big task and it’s uneven at this point.”Every six years, all members of the Accrediting Commission for Community Colleges and Junior Colleges Western Association of Schools and Colleges (ACCJC-WASC), undergo a two-year long self-evaluation process to see how well the college is meeting the four standards established by the ACCJC-WASC for colleges to use as guidelines. The ACCJC-WASC is a corporate entity, whose purpose is to ensure that the colleges are performing at its best as a higher education institute. During the fall of 2007, an accreditation team from the ACCJC-WASC will visit Skyline to finalize the process. On Aug. 29, the Steering Committee had their first meeting of the semester, where they gave feedback to the Writing Committee and discussed what revisions needed to be made to the first draft of the Accreditation Self Study. From the meeting on the 29th, the Steering Committee decided that two subsequent workshops or meetings should be held. During these workshops, the writing teams will come together to receive more feedback, as well as additional updated information from the Steering Committee, according to Cathy Hasson, the accreditation liaison officer and director of planning, research, and institutional effectiveness for Skyline College.Letters have been mailed out to all Skyline College employees notifying them of the “Employee Voice Survey” that will be distributed Sept. 11. The survey, which is the second major data collection amongst the college, will serve as an informational tool for the accreditation process. Last spring, a survey was distributed amongst day and night time students. The results can be found on the Skyline College website.”If there are questions that need to be followed up, we might do some smaller studies, but this is the last piece of a big information gathering,” said Bestock.Employees have a two-week window to complete and return the survey. Unlike the student survey, which was a standardized survey purchased from a company that is used by schools across the nation, Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory, the employee survey was developed internally by the Accreditation Steering Committee, Institutional Planning Committee, and the College Council.”We are hoping for at least a 75 percent response rate (from the ‘Employee Voice Survey),” said Hasson. “It’s been a really energetic process and I think it’ll continue to be that way until the end.”The co-chair for standard three, which focuses on the schools resources, has been replaced by Jennifer Hughes, dean of counseling. Andreas Wolf, physical education dean/athletic director, who originally was the co-chair, left Skyline before the start of the fall semester.