The Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC), the agency responsible for evaluating professional journalism programs at colleges and universities, voted to grant accreditation to the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism at a meeting in Arlington, Va. on May 2.
The ACEJMC affirmed the recommendation for accreditation of three reviewers, led by Douglas Anderson, dean of the Penn State College of Communications. The site team spent three days on campus last fall examining every aspect of the CUNY graduate journalism program. In a report written at the end of the visit, the reviewers stated, “It defies logic that a graduate program in journalism could come so far so fast.”
The CUNY J-School opened in August 2006 under Founding Dean Stephen B. Shepard. It obtained this voluntary professional accreditation on its first attempt on top of the academic accreditation it has had from Day 1 from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education as part of the CUNY Graduate Center.
The decision to give the CUNY J-School the ACEJMC stamp of approval completes a rigorous four-year self-assessment process in which the School had to present evidence of compliance with nine accrediting standards.
The analysis, contained in a 268-page self-study report written by Prof. Steven Strasser with input from the administration, faculty, students, and alumni, looked at everything from the J-School’s five-year strategic plan to its diversity record to its success at achieving clearly defined learning outcomes.
ACEJMC currently accredits 108 professional programs in the U.S. and outside the country. About 450 colleges and universities offer formal programs in journalism and mass communications, and about 1,000 institutions provide some training in these fields.