Accreditation and Quality Improvement
In 2018, Red Rocks Community College joined the Higher Learning Commission's Open Pathway for Accreditation. The Open Pathway follows a 10-year cycle focused on quality assurance and institutional improvement. It is unique in that its improvement component, the Quality Initiative, affords institutions the opportunity to pursue improvement projects that meet their current needs and aspirations. The Quality Initiative takes place between years 5 and 9 of the 10-year cycle. A Quality Initiative project may be designed to begin and be completed during this time, or an institution may continue a project already in progress or achieve a key milestone in the work of a more extended initiative. The Quality Initiative allows institutions to take risks, aim high, and learn from only partial success or even failure.
HLC conducts Assurance Reviews to determine whether an institution is in compliance with the Criteria for Accreditation and other HLC requirements. The Assurance Review is conducted by itself in Year 4 of the 10-year accreditation cycle and is a part of the comprehensive evaluation in Year 10. Assurance review involves the institution preparing an Assurance Argument, which is shared with a team of peer reviewers that evaluate the evidence in the argument, prepare a report, and make a recommendation to the HLC decision-making body for continued accreditation.
Building a Culture of Quality at Red Rocks Community College
To continue to build a quality culture at RRCC, we need everyone to function as one big team to improve student success while making the college a great place to work. We do this through the Executive Team, the Constituency groups, the college divisions, and the Collaboration Council, which has representation from all of the above. Based on college-wide planning and assessment results, these groups develop annual budget priorities. These priorities may be ongoing strategic directions or new initiatives. In either case, quality improvement for accreditation has the greatest importance. Coming from events and teams across the college, the following documents show what we have done in the past to improve quality.
Most Recent Accreditation Documents
