Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

From Accreditation to Validation: CIC’s First Half-Century
From Accreditation to Validation
In a recent interview, Gary Quehl noted that CIC has had
five long-serving presidents. Each, he thought, had been
the right person for the Council at the right time: Alfred
Hill to shepherd CASC through its infancy; Roger Voskuyl
to strengthen the ties with the founding membership;
Quehl himself to make it a national service organization;
Allen Splete to expand the membership and obtain new
grant support; and Richard Ekman to widen CIC’s services
to people in many leadership roles on campus, increase
membership, and raise CIC’s national visibility.
Today, CIC is an organization that provides college
presidents and other campus leaders with opportunities
to learn from one another’s experience. Both CIC and its
member institutions are more robust today than they were
in 1956. But the challenges of 2006 are no easier than the
challenges of 1956, and the organization must continue to
evolve in order to meet them effectively.
2005
CIC launches Making the Case, a data-collection and public-relations initiative;
CIC/Collegiate Learning Assessment Consortium, a project to define the “value
added” by institutions to their students’ learning; and Presidential Vocation
and Institutional Mission, a program designed to guide current and prospective
presidents in reflection about each leader’s sense of calling as it relates to the
mission of the college that the president leads or might lead.
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