Dr. Sandra Geringer
United States Sports Academy faculty member Dr. Sandra Geringer is set to make a presentation at the annual meeting of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) in Houston, Texas, in December.
Geringer, the Academy’s director of recreation management and sports studies, has intimate knowledge of the SACSCOC assessment process after having served the last two years as the Academy’s liaison to the regional higher education accrediting body.
Geringer’s presentation, “Complying with Standard 12.6: Student Debt,” will cover updates to SACSCOC’s policies related to student financial awareness. The Academy developed an online orientation module for Financial Aid Literacy in preparation for the revisions to the SACSCOC Principles of Accreditation, specifically Standard 12.6. The presentation will cover the findings from two semesters’ worth of data from that module.
Geringer has been heavily involved in coordinating, organizing and editing documentation for the Academy’s recent reaffirmation process through SACSCOC. The Academy in December 2018 learned that its SACSCOC accreditation had been reaffirmed for another 10 years. As America’s only freestanding sports university, the Academy was first accredited in 1983. The institution’s accreditation was previously reaffirmed in 2008.
Accreditation by SACSCOC, according to the organization, “signifies that the institution has a mission appropriate to higher education; has resources, programs, and services sufficient to accomplish and sustain that mission; and maintains clearly specified educational objectives that are consistent with its mission and appropriate to the degrees it offers, and that indicate whether it is successful in achieving its stated objectives.”
SACSCOC is the regional body for the accreditation of degree-granting higher education institutions in the Southern United States. It serves as the common denominator of shared values and practices among the diverse institutions in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Latin America and other international sites approved by the Commission.
The mission of SACSCOC is to assure the educational quality and improve the effectiveness of its member institutions. Its vision is to serve as the premier model for shaping and ensuring the quality of higher education throughout the world.
