Oswald Ratteray 

Speaker biography

Oswald Ratteray is the Assistant Director for Constituent Services and Special Programs at the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. He is responsible for coordinating the Commission’s outgoing information in the form of training workshops, the annual conferences, symposia and conferences on special topics, print publications, and its World Wide Web publications. He also has joint responsibility for the Commission’s incoming information, collecting and analyzing the data that colleges and universities are required to submit annually as well as occasional surveys on special topics. Some of these topics have included the self-study process, peer review, information literacy, and outcomes assessment. In 1999, he served on a multi-institutional task force, sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries to develop The Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, published by ACRL in January 2000. He also is the author of several articles.

Presentation abstract

"Are Students Really Learning? Faculty/Librarian Collaboration for Accreditation"

The eight regional accrediting commissions have agreed that they will make student learning a central factor in accrediting colleges and universities. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education is now revising Characteristics of Excellence in Higher Education, its standards for accreditation, a process that has occurred every five to seven years. In its current revisions, the Commission leads among the regions by having four standards that specifically emphasize student learning and its assessment. The requirement for students to be information literate when they graduate has a prominent place in all of these standards. Moreover, librarians and faculty have central and shared roles in implementing the information literacy requirement. Collaboration among faculty and librarians, therefore, is not only essential but it is also a requirement in the standards. This collaborative approach should be reflected in the self-study designs that institutions submit in 2002.