WASC commission will vote next month on whether to accredit Maui Community College’s new four-year degree program, which combines business and technology.As the first graduates of Maui Community College’s four-year degree program enjoy some well-deserved downtime following commencement ceremonies; back on campus, the big test is still ahead.
Next month, the Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) will vote on whether to accredit MCC’s new Bachelor of Applied Science in Applied Business and Information Technology (ABIT) degree program. The commission previously recognized the ABIT program as a candidate for accreditation through July 15, 2009, but this does not guarantee that it will be accredited.
For MCC to have an accredited baccalaureate degree program has long been a goal of Chancellor Clyde Sakamoto. Formation of the current ABIT program began more than five years ago when accounting teacher David Grooms (now ABIT program coordinator) and fellow business and computer teachers BK Griesemer and David Kruse laid the educational foundation.
“We got it started, and we’ve taken it through all the steps for accreditation,” Grooms said. “We had a WASC visiting team of both the junior and senior [college] commissions in March. … Now they will make a recommendation to the commission, the subcommittee will review it, and it will be voted on.”
Not only the faculty but the newly graduated ABIT students are also “waiting with bated breath,” said Suzette Robinson, MCC interim vice chancellor of academic affairs. The potential accreditation might be retroactive for the class of spring 2007.
Why is accreditation important? According to the U.S. Department of Education, accreditation “ensure[s] that education provided by institutions of higher education meets acceptable levels of quality. Accrediting agencies…develop evaluation criteria and conduct peer evaluations to assess whether or not those criteria are met.”
MCC itself is already accredited by WASC’s junior commission. “MCC is not going to be a four-year school—that’s a much bigger process,” Grooms said. “[The college] will remain as it is, but if we’re successful, we will have a single baccalaureate degree accredited by the senior commission.”
Kahului residents Ryan and Krissy Garcia and Sunny Cabello were the first students to earn the new four-year degree from MCC, taking part in triumphant ceremonies at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center on May 13.
“That was really impressive, seeing them graduate,” Grooms said. “Seeing them onstage with their smiles and leis was just amazing. That’s what it’s all about—we’re here for the students.”
“[Commencement] is so invigorating because it allows people to see the possibilities,” Robinson said. “But it’s also the behind-the-scenes work of staff, faculty and students who are putting in so many hours and not complaining, always having that goal in mind.”
With upper division courses like “Database Application Design” and “Entrepreneurship—Opportunity, Recognition and Evaluation,” the ABIT program is far from easy. “It’s a challenging program, all the students agree,” said Counselor Crystal Alberto, who guides students through the program. “But it’s worthwhile for them for their educational goals… [and it’s] a good fit for them to pursue a degree on Maui without having to leave the island.”
In 2002, MCC sent out approximately 60,000 surveys countywide, asking residents what they would want in a four-year degree. “The two areas that came back very strongly were business and technology,” Robinson said. “The beauty [of the ABIT] is that it incorporates both. … In developing the program, we were very careful not to compete with our sister campuses.”
Since 1993, students have been able to pursue bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UH Manoa, UH Hilo, and UH West O‘ahu through the University of Hawai‘i Center on the MCC campus. Robinson acknowledged the successful efforts of the center to “broker” programs from the sister campuses to MCC, resulting in numerous graduations every year.
Students in these programs take some courses online, through distance education, or by commuting to other islands. Many of the programs are made up of cohorts, groups that advance through the program together. With the ABIT program, students can take all their classes on the MCC campus with onsite faculty, and they can enter the program at any time.
“As the college and community have grown over the years, we’ve got a community of people who need access to higher education opportunities,” Robinson said. “In [MCC’s] strategic plan, one of our core values is access. Access takes many different forms, and we want people to be able to enter at whatever level they are at in their life, and also to be able to move up the ladder of education—so, access not just to associate’s degrees, but also to bachelor’s, etc.”
MCC has plans to put the ABIT classes on distance education media so students at outreach sites in Moloka‘i, Lana‘i and Hana can access the program as well.
“Currently, I’m working with 73 [upper and lower-division] students in the ABIT program,” Alberto said. “We should have five or six students finishing for next Spring.”
“The pipeline is really quite strong,” Robinson said. “The faculty and counselors did a really good job of getting the word out to students about it, [and] the quality of the students is very, very good. We have graduates who I think will be very successful in whichever field they choose to work.”
For more information, visit www.maui.hawaii.edu/abit.