Director Michael Bugeja has been elected as representative on the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, the agency responsible for the evaluation of professional journalism and mass communications programs in colleges and universities.
With Bugeja’s election to the Accrediting Council, the Greenlee School now has three faculty members on national committees. [Raluca Cozma](), Greenlee assistant professor, was chosen to fill a one-year vacancy on the Committee on Teaching. [Daniela Dimitrova](/directory/daniela-dimitrova/), director of graduate education, is a member of the Publications Committee.
Bugeja credits ACEJMC with helping elevate the national profile of the Greenlee School during his ISU tenure, which began in 2003. “The faculty and staff have worked hard on meeting the values and competencies of accreditation,” he said, ensuring that graduates of accredited programs have the requisite skills for the workplace or graduate program study.
Bugeja added that Susanne Shaw, ACEJMC executive director, has been instrumental in helping programs advance transparency as a key concept in the accreditation process.
Based on that standard, the Greenlee School in 2010 was among the first in the nation to create a public accountability website on its home page. In 2013, Bugeja published an article in Inside Higher Ed about importance of transparency in cutting costs of higher education. The Council for Higher Education Accreditation, which advocates self-regulation of academic quality through accreditation, recognizes ACEJMC and also had advocated for public disclosure.
Now all accredited units in journalism and mass communication must publish and update post-graduation and retention statistics.
Accreditation is a system of voluntary self-assessment and external review of educational institutions and of professional programs offered by those institutions. Accreditation provides an assurance of quality to students, parents, and the public. In the accrediting process, the performance of educational units is measured against national standards. ACEJMC has been housed at the University of Kansas since 1985, under Shaw’s direction.