City College of San Francisco - California Competes

READERS’ GUIDE TO
THE CCSF ACCREDITATION SELF STUDY
Warning: This Accreditation Self Study is different from most community college reports, and consequently
we have developed this brief Readers’ Guide to help you navigate and understand what we have
constructed here in these pages. The CCSF Self Study is neither a traditional examination of the evidence
supporting the College’s alignment with the WASC standards, nor is it a series of essays constructed
around a theme integrating all the evidence under each thematic topic.
The CCSF Self Study seeks to integrate the traditional analytical framework of describing and analyzing
institutional evidence with a set of six theme-based essays that provide the reader with a deeper understanding
of the College and its achievements. The net effect, we hope, is to portray the landscape of our
institution with additional close-up views of some of the most significant advances that we have made
since the College’s last accreditation visit in the year 2000. We strongly recommend that you read the
standards reports before reading the theme essays.
I. Context
The report sets the context for the study with two brief reports: one on what the College has been doing
to respond to the accreditation recommendations from the 2000 visit, and the other, an introduction to
CCSF and the City of San Francisco using data from the Office of Research, Planning and Grants, and
the CCSF Decision Support System.
II. Standards Reports
During Fall 2004, over 120 College participants studied and discussed hundreds of pages of evidence and
then crafted a series of reports about how well the College is meeting the WASC standards. The reports
were discussed within the larger College community, modified and revised, and finally approved by
the Accreditation Steering Committee. The four major standards are broken into nine reports covering
Standards I, IIA, IIB, IIC, IIIA, IIIB, IIIC, IIID, and IV.
Each report contains extensive description and analysis of the evidence related to each standard. However,
unlike the traditional self studies that contain a “Plan” section, the nine standards reports conclude by
identifying strengths and areas for improvement developed by the standard committee and approved by
the Accreditation Self-Study Steering Committee. The recommendations for improvement identified in the
individual standards reports are brought together in a separate section entitled Major Findings (see below).
III. Introduction to the Theme Essays
To keep the reader on track, we have written a short introduction to explain the context for the Theme
Essays, the underlining assumptions that were used in developing the Theme Essays, and their relationship
to the Standards Reports. Again, we recommend that you read the Standards Reports before reading the
Theme Essays.
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