I’m a NASPAA Accreditation Site Visit Practitioner!: Now What?

Thank you for agreeing to serve as a practitioner on a NASPAA site visit team! You are participating in a vital peer process that is a key to improving professional preparation for public service across the entire country.

At first, the prospect of being a practitioner on a site visit might be a little intimidating or confusing, and your part in the visit might seem a bit unclear. But with this pamphlet, some advance reading of the school’s materials, and a chat with your team chair, you will feel like a veteran in no time at all.

Practitioners play an absolutely essential role in bringing the “real world” into the site visit. You are expected to bring your working knowledge of the skills needed in the public sector workplace to the world of public affairs education. Don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions about the relevance of the curriculum, the skill attainment of graduates, and placement records. That’s your job! The generations of practitioners “who have gone before” have generally found it a very stimulating experience, one that has reinvigorated some of their academic interests, introduced them to new and useful colleagues, and led to changes in how they perceive and perform their own work.

Logistics for Site Visitors

While expenses are covered, site visitors, including practitioner members, are not paid for their time during the visit. Once you have agreed to serve, you should make sure that NASPAA has your most current cv or resume. It is held in NASPAA files and is also provided to the host school so that they may know the background of their site visitors. NASPAA will send you a confirmation letter that identifies your site visit chair, the other member of the team, and your contact at the host school. Your site visit chair will be an experienced site visitor, and will be your principal source of information about the visit. Together with your fellow team members, you will decide what arrival and departure times work best for you, a work plan, and a schedule of visits and interviews. Your chair will work out the schedule with the contact at the host school.

Your contact at the school will get in touch with you to arrange hotel reservations. Sometimes they have a contract with a particular hotel where they can be direct billed, or sometimes they simply have a hotel to recommend to you in the area that is especially convenient. You’ll put the hotel charge on the expense report you submit to NASPAA.

Your travel reservations are generally up to you. Unless the school has a contract with a particular air carrier, for example, they will probably want you to make your own air or train reservations. (Though you claim expenses through NASPAA, ultimately the school will be reimbursing NASPAA for them, so they appreciate you getting the least expensive fare that meets your needs).

Things to Do Before your Arrival

Here are the items you should look at in advance of the site visit, and take with you to your site visit. They will be sent to you, either in a packet or via email:

• NASPAA’s Official Documents: this is the bible for you as a site visitor. The Official Documents may be found on the NASPAA website (www.naspaa.org) as separate documents: 1) NASPAA/COPRA’s Standards, against which you will measure the program. 2) a Site Visit Manual which provides sample interview questions, a sample site visit schedule, and a general explanation of what you as a site visitor should do. 3) The all-important Site Visitor Travel Expense Voucher, which makes sure you get reimbursed for your expenses!
• Self Study Report: after a year of self-study, the school writes a report describing how it meets the NASPAA standards. As a practitioner, you will probably want to focus on Standard 2, Mission (is its mission relevant to public sector employers’ needs in the area?), Standard 4, Curriculum (are these courses relevant to the needs of the public/non-profit sector in this region?), and Standard 7, Student Services (is the school providing the skills needed for placing them into public sector/non-profit jobs in this region? Is it placing all its students in good career-track jobs?)
• Interim Report: After COPRA members receive the Self Study, they analyze it, and issue a report that identifies their concerns about the institution’s compliance with particular standards. Their report will guide you, as a site visitor, in what issues COPRA thinks are most important to investigate on the campus.
• Response to Interim Report: This is the school’s opportunity to respond to COPRA’s findings. It often provides data or explanations useful to you as a site visitor.
• Site Visit Training CD-Rom: This CD is readable on Adobe Acrobat. It is used to help train site visitors, and you can use it to prepare for your visit, or to answer questions you may have about what you should be looking for on the site visit.

On your Way

Many site visitors, especially the chair, now take a notebook computer with them to the visit. It’s useful, but not essential: it allows you to write up your portion of the final report before you depart, hand over the diskette to the chair, and leave without further follow-ups needed.

More essential is the need to keep track of your receipts. As of 2001, you no longer need to keep receipts for your small incidentals (such as snacks or subway fare) up to $10 in total. But you will need an airline receipt, airport transportation receipt, hotel receipt, and the checks from any meals.

On Site

Once you are on site, the usual mother’s advice applies: make sure you eat regularly, get plenty of sleep, and wear your galoshes if it rains. But seriously, site visits can get hectic and overscheduled. So, make sure you program in some breaks for rest and meals, and some time for talking just among the team members at regular intervals.

• Confidentiality: Please bear in mind that site visits are confidential. COPRA and the school expect you to keep in confidence what you learn on the site visit, especially about students and faculty, budget issues, and any problems the school may be having, .

• Site Team Report: COPRA appreciates how busy practitioners are. But the accreditation timetable is tight, and requires that the site team report be completed, sent to the school for response, and then transmitted to COPRA in advance of their spring meeting. Most chairs ask the practitioner to participate in writing part of the final report, which while not long or onerous, needs to be a serious and thoughtful document.

  This means your chair will look to you to complete your portion either while still on site or shortly after your return to the “real world.” In a word,-- or two--Thank you! From all of us at NASPAA and COPRA, thank you for serving as a practitioner, and we hope you find it a rewarding experience—and one worth repeating!

This pamphlet was written on 2/6/01 and revised in May 02 by Laurel McFarland, NASPAA Academic Director (copra@naspaa.org).

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I would like to serve as an academic member of a NASPAA Accreditation Site Visit team. How do I obtain training for that?

Thank you for your interest in serving as an academic member of a NASPAA site visit team! You are participating in a vital peer process that is a key to improving professional preparation for public service across the entire country.

Training is an essential part of the accreditation process. Academics are expected to bring with them to the site visit their practical knowledge of how MPA programs work, and an understanding of the challenge that administrators and faculty face in achieving excellence in their program. But they are also expected to bring some specialized knowledge of how accreditation works, and the role of the site visit in the process—and that’s where the training comes in.

All site visitors are expected to participate in at least one training session before going out as a site visitor. Many veteran site visitors come back and attend another training session to stay current with NASPAA accreditation standards and practices. NASPAA strongly encourages all potential academic site visitors to speak with the NASPAA principal representative at their institution, to inform them of their interest and to obtain their approval.

The easiest place to participate in an accreditation site visitor training session is at the

• NASPAA annual conference every October.

In addition, NASPAA generally organizes a training session at these national conferences each year:

• ICMA (Fall of each year)
• ASPA (Spring)

If you are not able to attend any of these conferences, NASPAA also organizes regional training sessions on an occasional basis. You should contact the NASPAA office at copra@naspaa.org for more details on this possibility in your area.

Finally, peer to peer training is also available from NASPAA staff, past site visit chairs, and COPRA members. We use a special CD-ROM developed by B J Reed at the University of Nebraska just for this purpose.

These options should make it possible for nearly all interested academics or program administrators to become members of accreditation site visit teams.

As part of the registration process at your training session, you will be asked for your business card or contact information. A week or two after the session, NASPAA staff will send you a brief email containing a profile form and a request for your CV. Both of these documents are maintained electronically at the NASPAA office, and you will not be eligible to go out on a site visit until both documents are in hand. The profile is held in NASPAA files and is also provided to the host school so that they may know the background of their site visitors.