Department hopes to regain accreditation

The mark of a good academic program in the California State University system may be determined by whether the department is accredited.

Only one department at Cal State Long Beach out of 22 eligible for accreditation lacks it, and that is the journalism department, which lost accreditation status more than three years ago, said university spokeswoman Toni Beron.

However, most of CSULB's 63 academic departments and programs are not accredited because there is no outside agency offering accreditation, said Keith Polakoff, associate vice president of instructional programs at CSULB.

"There are a lot of business schools that are not accredited, but it doesn't have as much importance as in some other fields" such as nursing or teaching, Polakoff said.

Accredited departments tend to offer specialized majors such as athletic training, dance, nursing, social work and music.

Many times, accreditation can be vital to the department's credibility and status within the business and social world, Polakoff said.

"The intent is to ensure credible efficiency in a professional field," he said.

An independent agency outside the school will typically be invited by the department to send a "site team" onto campus to check things such as the department's teacher-to-student ratio, faculty qualifications, courses offered and internship opportunities, Polakoff said.

"The site team will then draw up a report and send it to an agency's accreditation committee," Polakoff said.

The committee will either approve or deny accreditation, based on the site team's observations.

"Sometimes they will approve, but with conditions," Polakoff said. "They tell them to clean up or fix any problems, or redefine and fine tune the curriculum. It all depends."

As for the journalism department, university officials are confident that it will regain accreditation in the near future.

"Things are looking up," said journalism department chairman Lee Brown. "Right now we're building up what we have. We've got new faculty, added $100,000 in new equipment."

Polakoff said he remembers when the department lost accreditation, calling it a "raw deal."

"The timing was terrible," Polakoff said. "They never really raised any questions about the program. It was more about the [lack of qualified] faculty and the equipment. We will definitely get it back."