Every 10 years, NIU goes through the reaccreditation process, and this year, the time has come up.

Jan Rintala, assistant chair of kinesiology and physical education, along with a steering committee, is busy compiling the first drafts of reports to present to the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Universities.

The goal is for NIU to recognize its strengths as an institution and areas of concern that may be improved.

“The idea of the reaccreditation process is to see if the institution is doing its mission,” Rintala said. “It’s a quality indicator.”

Rintala also mentioned that it is important to students who are looking to attend NIU to notice that the institution is constantly trying to improve itself.

The process began in spring 2002 by forming a steering committee comprised of members of faculty appointed by NIU President John Peters and members of the provost office. Rintala thinks that she was appointed chairwoman because she is involved in many committees on campus that focus on the school’s needs. At this point in the process, information is being collected by the subcommittees, and the beginning of the first drafts are being compiled.

“We are in the preliminary stages right now,” Rintala said. “After Spring Break, we will be showing the drafts to the particular areas that we are looking at for input. Hopefully, they will be able to identify any big thing that we’ve forgotten to include. There’s so much going on on campus, it’s hard to identify everything.”

Some of the strengths that Rintala and her committee have noticed so far is the curriculum of the institution.

“Obviously, keeping our curriculum current and addressing the number of students is one strength NIU has,” Rintala said. “Also, being able to prepare students for their careers as well as general knowledge is another advantage we’ve noticed.”

As for areas of concern, Rintala doesn’t think that she has noticed anything of real substance this far in the committee research.

“I think anything would be improvable,” Rintala said. “We haven’t identified anything that isn’t allowing us to do our mission.”

As for the rest of the process, Rintala plans on devoting her entire summer to compiling all the information into one comprehensible draft that will be presented to the NCA in December 2003. This will be followed by the NCA’s visit to campus in summer 2004.

“I’m learning an awful lot about this institution,” Rintala said.