The Commission on Accreditation (CoA) held its annual policy meeting Feb. 12-15, 2015, in Washington, D.C. This meeting was preceded by an orientation day for new members on Feb. 11. For the fourth consecutive year, commissioners participated in a “calibration” exercise designed to maximize consistency of decisions across reviewers. As is typical of the annual policy meeting, no programs were reviewed. Instead, CoA focused on a number of important policy issues including reviewing submitted public comment and approving the Introduction to the proposed Standards of Accreditation (SoA) and proposed revisions to the Accreditation Operating Procedures (AOP). The comments collected during the public comment period directed CoA’s work and were incorporated into the Introduction or will be addressed in an Implementing Regulation or the glossary. CoA also continued its work on a number of Implementing Regulations designed to supplement the SoA and AOP. These include clarifying:
- Doctoral level intent to apply and “accredited, on contingency.”
- Doctoral level discipline specific knowledge.
- Doctoral level faculty qualifications.
- Doctoral and internship level profession-wide competencies.
- Internship and postdoctoral level internship/resident disclosure data.
- Direct observation (at all levels).
- Site visitor nomination (at all levels).
- Site visitor selection (at all levels).