Digital Scholarship and Initiatives

This article discusses El Paso Community College (Texas) and Robeson Community College (RCC)--both placed on probation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools “. . . for too much micromanagement and too little magnanimity among board members.” The article notes that “probation is the next to last step on SACS' continuum of warnings,” and loss of accreditation results in loss of all state and federal funding.

The article outlines the history of problems at RCC--including two board members applying for the same vice president's position in 1999; an employee of RCC who applied for another position at the school filing a discrimination suit; a SACS reaccreditation visiting committee criticizing the board of trustees for lacking a written policy defining its role and advising that the college president be given the authority to carry out RCC's goals; and a meeting in Atlanta where the board was to discuss its responses to the reaccreditation visit report--but only half of the board members attended.

The college's probation was even more regrettable in light of Robeson County's need to retrain workers who had lost their jobs because of plant closings.

The article also describes changes made at RCC (as of the date of this article) since probation began. It also notes that only two other colleges were placed on probation at the same time as RCC and El Paso CC. The total number of probations issued by SACS from 1997-2000 is 5.