Joi Patterson and Amy Vujaklija discuss the importance of stakeholder involvement in accreditation, emphasizing that accreditation is a team effort involving both internal and external partners. They highlight the necessity of engaging students, faculty, staff, administrators, community members, and alumni. Joi compares stakeholder identification to planning a wedding, stressing the importance of including all relevant parties. They also discuss the triangulation process in accreditation, which involves self-study reports, assessments, and stakeholder feedback. Joi advises creating an advisory board and maintaining mutualistic relationships to ensure ongoing stakeholder involvement and successful accreditation.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Accreditation, stakeholders, leadership, partnerships, student support, community engagement, advisory board, alumni involvement, data sharing, mutualistic relationships, professional development, triangulation, self-study report, feedback loop, intentional relationships.

SPEAKERS

Joi Patterson, Amy Vujaklija

One person could do it, but you wouldn't ever master that triangulation if you don't have all three points and stakeholders, is a big point all by itself.

Teaching and leading are rewarding, but complex,

and whether you're in a classroom or a campus, new challenges are always emerging. I'm Amy Vujaklija. I'm Joi Patterson, and this is teaching and leading, where we explore teaching, leadership, equity and the systems that shape education

and how educators can grow, explore and have a meaningful impact as teachers and leaders. So let's get into it. Hi. Dr Amy, hello. Dr Joi. How are you today?

Good and ready for our last segment and for the series on accreditation. Hasn't it been fun? I know that may sound weird, but accreditation is fun for us, and hopefully, by the time our listeners are done with all four episodes under the segment of accreditation, you'll think it's fun too, at least, at the very least, you won't feel so intimidated. So today we're going to talk about one of Amy's favorite topics, which is stakeholders. Because accreditation will go really bad if you try to do it as office of one. Accreditation really takes leadership. It takes a team effort, and not just internal, but also external. And so it means developing good partnerships and things like that. Some of our partnerships have just lasted through time, and it's just a gift that keeps giving. So you it's almost like, if you write your dissertation, you got to see, how many things can I get out of this dissertation? How many articles on a book and this can I get out of a dissertation? I feel like your stakeholders, the same way, like, how much can I get out of the stakeholder? The gift, it just keeps giving. So that's what we're going to talk about today. So Amy, when we say stakeholders, I mean, because that's a lot. When you hear stakeholders, what are we talking about?

So stakeholders, who has an investment, invested interest? Yeah, so we're looking at students, faculty and staff as well, have an invested interest in the programs and how they're delivered. Administrators, yes, at the university itself, it can be across the university, in our case, across divisions and working with student support services, stakeholders in the success of the programs. But really, there's that stakeholder we forget about. We forget sometimes, how important it is to engage our partners, and those are community members. In our case with licensure for educators, teachers, administrators, school support personnel, the district office, the administrators in the school, teachers who are in the classroom, paraprofessionals, school support personnel in the classroom, a lot. There are a lot of

stakeholders, even your board, right? So your governing board, they have a stake in this. Was like, who has a stake in this? And even the community? Because for many universities or schools, whatever you are, you are a partner in their in the community. So they are stakeholders as well, because you're a cornerstone in the community, Amy, as you were going through that list, you know what it reminded me of? Of you sitting there with your mother or your fiance planning your wedding list, and that's what it feels like. Who are the stakeholders, who are the people, especially your parents, who are the people that have to be there, and they start saying where you gotta add this person because of such and such and such and such, and you gotta add this person because they get such a such and such, and you got, you're like, Who are these people? But that's what it's like, because, and then they have these good rationales, right, of why that person needs to be at the party, right? And so that's what your stakeholders is like. It's like if you are planning a really important party, who are all the people that need to be there, or if you're doing a fundraiser, who are all the important people that need to be there, and why? Because they have a stake in this. But that's what it reminded me of as you were going down. Out this list. But nobody likes to be called to the party late, right, like they were an afterthought, right? And sometimes that does happen with stakeholders, because you had a whole list of people that you just rattled on. And stakeholders is not about just, oh, who can I get right now? Because I'm trying to fill this void that's actually a relationship. Who tends to be most involved, who tends to be left out. How do you kind of galvanize? How do you create these stakeholders

bounce that question back to you. What have you seen over the years? Who does sometimes get left out or not recognized and made, you know, really part of that circle in a meaningful, intentional way? You know? What have you seen over time? I'm kind of bouncing that back to you,

actually, I think some of your most powerful stakeholders that sometime can be an afterthought are your alumni. And I think they can be your most powerful because they've already been through the program. They have lots of stories they can tell you about closing that loop and how you have impacted their classroom. I think another group that we don't think about, which is a mistake, is our governing board. And if they were to be interviewed by someone on the accreditation team, what would they say? Would they even know anything? So I do think that there needs to be more intentional time with our governing board, because it's their responsibility, actually, and they probably know the least. And really taking advantage of that alumni base, you

make a really good point, because we don't really embrace the people who left the program two or three or four, five years ago. It's the immediate and then they come back as maybe to get an advanced degree, and we often lose some of that reach when they're a little bit more than a few years out. But something that you said really brought to mind a very important point. You said, would they even know what to say? That's why having an advisory board is so very beneficial, but not just to meet for the sake of meeting and to talk about the state policies or how policy is impacting the school or impacting the university, but really data sharing and asking for honest feedback and suggestions ways in which to extend or expand the partnership. What are their needs? And having that voice of diverse board members help build and extend and expand the programs so a token advisory board doesn't work.

What are they going to talk about? They would have had to be engaged from the beginning or at some point, they would have had to be engaged. It's not something that you want to coach someone, because it will come out in your accreditation visit. That's why accreditors, they really love the stakeholders voice. So one of the things we didn't explain early on is this triangulation process for accreditation. So you have your self study or your report or whatever it is you're calling it, and you spend lots of months working on this, because you got your assessments, and you got how you have to write it a certain way, and all of this, and you end up with 300 pages or whatever. But you got your report, and your report says, we do this, we do that, we do this. Here's the data, all of this. So that's the one. And then they want to see your assessments, right? And see, let's see the data. Let's see if the data matches up with what you said. So that's the second thing. And then the third thing is that stakeholders are people saying what you are doing. Has that feedback loop been closed? Are they telling us these things? Are they being demonstrating integrity? Are they being transparent? Are they saying that you were effective? Or do they feel informed? Do they know all this information about the program? So it's that whole triangulation. It's not because it's the report writing, even though it's hard, one person could do it, but you wouldn't ever master that triangulation, which is required for a good accreditation, if you don't have all three points and stakeholders, is a big point all by itself.

Yes, you can write that three. 100 page or 200 page or 1000 page report. You can fly solo. You can pull assessments that programs are doing. They don't even have to see any of it. Now, I hope listeners aren't extracting that one little sentence out of what I'm saying, right? Because they will Yes, all, yeah, although you can do it, it's verified through that stakeholder voice and again, stakeholders include students, current students, graduates, people who've completed the program, faculty, staff, staff would include advisors or academic support services, stakeholders, including district administrators, cooperating teachers or mentors. Out in the field, we are pulling everyone together to verify a report that, although could be written solo, there is no way any of it could be verified and spoken about confidently and with assurance. Yep, yep, if there isn't everyone involved

and they can all also save you. So let's say, for example, you didn't have enough data over time. Could be a small program. You could have started collecting something late. You change rubrics, a lot of different reasons why. For something in particular, you may not have enough of something, and that's a ding against you. They start interviewing and talking to the stakeholder, and that stakeholder says, like, what we did was, oh no, a whole team from the University spent a whole day with my team at the P 12 school, and we talked about assessments. We were part of building their assessments and and we just started this two years ago, and we worked on it together, and now that's what they use when they're doing clinicals and stuff. So they just verify. That's why they don't have three years of data, because the rubric changed, and they showed that not only are they using the assessments in their clinicals. We help them develop it. Our teachers help them develop it. So a lot of times, your stakeholders, if you're doing what you're supposed to do, you know, because they're very credible, they can save you, but in the same token, they can actually put a nail in your coffin, too. Amy and say, Nope, they didn't do that. Nope, nope. My experience was terrible, because one of the things that you have to do of the stakeholder that we did not mention, you do have to send out the letter and publication. So you have to send a publication out, and maybe two, three newspapers. I can't remember how many and different accreditations may be different, saying that, hey, we're having accreditation on this date, whatever, whatever to the public. And does anyone have anything that they want to share with the accrediting body? Fortunately for me, no one has ever responded, but someone could, and someone could show up during the visit. So it's very, very important the stakeholders voice is very important so it can really, really, really strengthen, or it can be your demise.

Well, let me ask this, then, how can we ensure or what systems can be in place to ensure that that stakeholder involvement is ongoing, that it's not just piecemeal or episodic. I mean, it's ongoing consistent, because that's something that we were getting feedback on. It's like, oh, we do a great job with engaging our partners, but we could improve with the ongoing, consistent piece of that right?

And that part feels like so much extra work, right? And you said it earlier in the comment, you said your advisory group. So having that advisory group in place, of course, you're going to invite them to be part of the accreditation, the interviews, because those relationships are important, and you're trying to get their continuous feedback on things, but you have to create that environment, and you have to give them a reason to keep coming to the meetings. And sometimes that's difficult, right? Because what's in it for me, people are busy, and so you have to come up with what's in it for me, you know, like, why am I going to this meeting? Why do I care what Amy's department is doing? You know, I'm teaching, and I'm the English teacher at this high school, or whatever, and why do I need to be a part of that? So you have to create that story and show how them being in. On that advisory group is important, and they have to see why it's important. You know, sometimes even doing newsletters and sending blurbs and working with the alumni department so that you include things in the alumni newsletter, and somehow you're keeping people abreast and you're sharing good news and stories about some of your candidates and their experiences. So there's a variety of ways to keep your stakeholders involved, but you have to be very, very intentional about it. And I'm not going to say it's easy, because it is time consuming, and it should be a mutual relationship too. It can't be that they're always giving to you and your program. It should be mutual. And you know, we've done some of those things too. We've provided professional development for different schools, things like that. So it does have to be a mutual relationship for it to work.

I want to highlight what you just said about working with the alumni or the alumni office. There are a lot of intentional, intentional work you can do just across the university to know what different departments keep track of and what kind of communications go out into the community, whether they are newsletters, maybe there's a division newsletter or university newsletter. What are the alumni communications so that there can be that blurb or those good news reports or data sharing or invitations to join an advisory board as you have openings available. So that really highlights the importance of knowing people across campus and also having a systematic way of keeping track of who your graduates are, where they are, in our case, who the local school districts are and and what kind of hiring practices they have, if they have openings, and how we can support them absolutely.

So filling those openings, Yep, those are the things that we have to do. I mean, even things that are simple. You know, someone did student teaching supervision for you. Them having that letter that they could use for licensure renewal is big. Or saying, Oh, you can come here and take three credit hours for free, that goes a long way. So now you've created this partner. So now becomes your job. How do you keep it going? So it's no easy thing. I know you like this area of stakeholders and being involved in their world, but it's no easy thing to maintain. So it has to be very, very intentional, and you have to find a way to keep it going. And you're not the only one that has to do it right, you know? Because you have other people, other program coordinators and things, they have their own pool of stakeholders, so you're dependent on them to keep relationships going as well, because it is a lot. I hope we're not scaring people, but I mean, it can make the job a lot easier, too, when you have partners, and again, once you have good partners, it is the gift that keeps on giving.

I want to add to that point, it's really rewarding to have stakeholders, to have people who are part of an advisory board say thank you for the opportunity to serve on this board. When I want to say thank you for serving on the board, there is that desire to give back, to make things better in the community, and it's just a matter of tapping into that and to know that reaching out will have its rewards. And so I'm wondering if we were to leave with one bit of advice for our listeners on how to increase stakeholder involvement. What's something they could do now?

Well, I would say the first thing is create an advisory board of some sort, so at least you have a body, and from that advisory board you can have smaller teams that are working on things. So establish some kind of body, and then I would say, make it consistent, keep it going, and find ways and kind of recreate things and generate new things. You know, I do have to give you a shout out Amy this thing. That you have created day at gov state, for example, where you invite high school students who are interested in the profession, whatever that profession might be, because this is a thing now, to spend a day at gov state, and you've paired that with other things that are happening at Gulf state. So now you've expanded your partnerships inter departmental, and because there's a win win for that other department too, you know? So there's Win win all around, and you've provided that school district and that teacher was something very instrumental that those students needed. So this was very rewarding. So everybody wins in this situation, and that partnership that you just created with that classroom, with that school district, you're not going to be the one that's always calling now and saying, Hey, can you do this? They're going to be calling you. And it gets to a point sometimes where you can't even answer all the requests, and that's a good place to be, where you're the one in demand. Of, can your professors do this? Or can my students come here and do this? Or can we do this for me? Can you come to my school and do this professional development where now you're in demand? And those are really good partnerships, and they just keep giving over and over and over. So I would say my biggest advice is to make sure it's mutualistic. If it's not, if you do not have this mutualistic or symbiotic relationship with your partners, it will fizzle out. You can't just keep asking people for things everybody is busy, you know. You can't keep asking who your stakeholders are to do things for you and showing up for you when you're not there for them. So I would say it really does have to be mutualistic. So it has to be nurtured.

I think a lot of nurturing is definitely the case whenever we think about developing those mutually beneficial relationships. And that is our episode on stakeholders.

This is our series on accreditation. So it's been fun. I love it. So we're going to have some practical guides for our listeners. So hope that you're listening to this, but also we want you to use it for professional growth. We want you to share it. And so we will have also on the website where you can go to and look at some practical guides and information and reflection questions. So we're looking forward to utilizing this, and we hope that it really, really helps your next accreditation.

Thanks for listening to teaching and leading with Dr Amy and Dr Joi.

This podcast is supported by Governor State University.

Show Notes and resources for this episode are available at G, O, v, s, t.edu/teaching,

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