Texas A&M University

Streamlining Assessment & Accreditation with HelioCampus

Texas A&M

Overview

Located in the town of College Station, TX, Texas A&M University is a public research institution that serves more than 69,000 students and another 5,200 learners at locations across the state and in Doha, Qatar. Every 10 years, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), the accreditation body for higher education institutions in the south, requires its member institutions to prepare a “Decennial Report."  With Texas A&M facing its review in fall 2021, the team was focused on getting their report done in an efficient way, creating a process that included embarking on a digital, more modern approach that would not only deliver their Decennial Report, but that would enable regular, collaborative, and continuous improvement planning across its 550 programs, post-report.

Read the case study to learn how Texas A&M not only ushered in a new digital process for self-study preparation, but revolutionized their program assessment process—from enabling near real-time data collection and feedback to offering a single, accessible platform to track progress on essential assessment efforts across the university. 

"Given all the changes we were undergoing, getting an up-to-date snapshot of our university should have been a challenge. But thanks to the technology, we could easily make changes up until the day before. I’m not an actor on TV, and this is not a paid endorsement for HelioCampus—but this platform really saved us.”

Dr. Alicia Dorsey, Associate Vice President for Academic Effectiveness & Planning

Texas A&M University

How did the HelioCampus platform help Texas A&M?

  1. Utilize Templates to Create Workflows: For the compliance certification, I approached it as just another workflow. The first thing I did was draw it out on a whiteboard,” says Dorsey. “Then I went to HelioCampus’s amazing team of developers and thought leaders who helped my team figure out how to shift from my drawings to the HelioCampus platform itself.”
  2. Define Roles for Better Communication: The HelioCampus institutional assessment platform enables users to assign roles and permissions to foster communication paths among stakeholders.
  3. Streamlining Data Collection: The self-evaluation piece of the accreditation process is often a multi-year challenge, but having reliable, current data— coming from a single source of truth—creates simplicity and allows for maximum flexibility, lightening the load and enabling stakeholders to use data beyond accreditation reporting needs. 

The End Result?

The HelioCampus platform enabled Dr. Dorsey and her team to convey Texas A&M’s story accurately and powerfully—even during a period of continuous flux. Dr. Dorsey’s team wrapped up the Decennial Report in the middle of a global pandemic, amidst presidential changes at Texas A&M, and during a rare deep freeze in the south which shut down the university in February of 2021.

Learn More About the Results 

Read the Case Study