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Academic Quality Improvement Program

Accreditation is the formal process by which colleges and universities are authorized to award college credit and degrees. Santa Fe Community College has been accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) of the North Central Association (NCA) of Colleges and Schools since 1983, and its accreditation was last renewed in 2002.

AQIP (Academic Quality Improvement Program) refreshes the traditional approach to accreditation by asking that member institutions base their operations -- from helping students learn to valuing people - in quality systems. Quality, in this context, means continuous quality improvement - the employment of a specific cycle of problem-solving techniques developed from Baldrige principles:

  • Plan: use evidence to ensure that you understand the problem or the system you're approaching
  • Do: pilot a solution to the problem, based on what you learned in the Plan cycle
  • Check: study how well your solution is working
  • Act: modify your solution as necessary, and enter the cycle of continuous improvement through repeated monitoring of effectiveness

SFCC was accepted as an AQIP institution in the fall of 2007, and is in the process of implementing its first Action Projects as well as organizing its approach to the Systems Portfolio, which is analagous to a quality-based self study, and due to the Higher Learning Commission on June 1, 2011.

For more information, please contact Karen Luper, Special Assistant to the Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs and Coordinator of Accreditation, (505) 428-1605 , karen.luper@sfcc.edu.

Santa Fe Community College | 6401 Richards Ave. | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87508 | (505) 428-1000