APR FAQs

The Academic Program Review Procedures, as well as the templates for the self-study, the accredited program self-study, the external evaluator review, and the mid-cycle reports can be found on the APR main web page, found here.

The Schedule that includes each individual program, including those that are accredited, can be found here.

Because of the wide variety of programs at UNC Greensboro, there will not be specific benchmarks set for APR. Programs vary by number of students, type of program (theory vs practice), level of program (undergraduate, master’s, doctoral), resources (labs, performance space, etc), and many other variables.  It would be very difficult to identify numbers that work for all programs.

Instead, APR will be a holistic review that evaluates each program for the mission and objectives it has.

No, there is not a separate external review conducted for accredited programs. The accreditation team review is all that is required for the APR.

Yes, the Policy on Academic Program Planning (UNC Policy 400.1) states:

These Academic Program Reviews shall evaluate:

a. Current and projected student demand, as measured by enrollments in the majors and degrees produced;

b. Current and projected workforce demand, as measured by projected job growth and existing data on student employment outcomes;

c. Student outcomes, including persistence, graduation, time to degree, and, where possible, post-graduation success;

d. Program costs and productivity, including research, scholarship, and creative activity and student credit hours produced compared to the number and cost of faculty and staff;

e. The contribution of the program to professions that are critical to the health, educational attainment, and quality of life of North Carolinians; and

f. Any other considerations identified by the chancellor or by the President

Each of these policy items are contained in the self-study template and the accredited program self-study template, and they must be directly addressed in the self-study.

As the APR Procedures document says, “[the] self-study is intended to be a collaborative endeavor, that at minimum engages the department head, director of undergraduate studies, and graduate program director.” The makeup of the self-study team will vary by program and/or department, and there are no specific requirements for it. The APR should not be written by one person.

Things to consider when naming the team:

In order to construct a comprehensive and accurate report of the program(s), it is advisable to engage all full-time, tenure and non-tenure track faculty who teach in the program’s required courses. They may help in different roles like preparing the report, collecting materials, analyzing information, reviewing parts of the report, or doing other APR-related work.

In some programs, part-time instructors play a significant role in delivering the curriculum, advising students, and providing administrative support. Those programs may want to include those people in the process.

Staff also may have varying roles in the delivery of academic programs and departmental support. It may make sense in some departments to include staff in the review process.

Some programs and departments have advisory boards, alumni boards, community boards, and other boards or committees that regularly provide input about programs and departments. Faculty in those programs may choose to include those entities in some way in the review process.

Some programs may have undergraduate and/or graduate student groups who provide input about the department. They may conduct surveys of students periodically. They may choose to engage students in similar ways in the APR process.

Mid-cycle reports are due to the dean on April 1, either three years or 5 years after the APR or accreditation was complete for the program.

Decisions about expanding, contracting, eliminating, or taking no action for a program can be made at any point in the review process.

The timeline for accredited programs follows the schedule set by the accrediting agency. UNCG will not require any changes to that schedule.

Normally, a program will submit their accreditation report and the Self-Study for Accredited Programs after completion of the external accreditation. For example, a program that submits their report, has its external review, and gets their initial report in academic year 2025-2026 will submit their materials for UNCG’s APR in the fall of 2026.

However, if an accredited program is located in a department with non-accredited programs conducting APR in a different year, the Dean and Provost may agree that the accredited program should be included in the overall APR for the department. In that case, they will not submit the Self-Study for Accredited Programs, but they must submit their final accreditation report to the Dean and the Office of Assessment, Accreditation, and Academic Program Planning in the same academic year that they complete of their reaccreditation process.

The APR schedule can be found here.

Yes, a program’s APR schedule can change. The department may seek permission to revise their review schedule.  A dean may also decide to revise a program’s review schedule. 

All requests for review schedule changes must be made through the Office of Assessment, Accreditation, and Academic Program Planning and be approved by the Provost.

Faculty should analyze five (5) years of the most recent data for student demand, faculty workload, faculty productivity, learning assessment, and other criteria for the APR.

IREDM (Institutional Research and Enterprise Data Management) has put together dashboards to be utilized for the APR process populated with data going back to 2019. Those dashboards will be updated on an ongoing basis as those data become official and available. Faculty can available data that extend that timeline more years, but they must use 5 years of data when they are available.

Programs that are newer or have gone through changes may not have 5 years of data available, but those instances will be rare.

Action plans should include any steps, projects, or objectives that the department and dean have identified to improve the programs included in the review. These can include actions to address areas of concern. They can also address current activities, projects, or strategic plans that faculty are working on to enhance an area of success.

All programs included in the review should also be included in the Action Plan. There may be one action plan that is department-wide, there may be individual actions for each program, or there may be some combination of both.

Each program will complete an action plan following their internal or accreditation review.  The mid-cycle report will align with a mid-cycle accreditation report, but the faculty will respond to the actions taken as identified in the Action Plan.

No, full accreditation reports will not be made public.  Those reports contain hundreds of documents that can contain FERPA-sensitive information that should not be shared.

The Office of Career and Professional Development (CPD) collects information from students about job placement.  They will be working with departments to encourage students to provide this information, so that data is more complete. CPD will then be able to produce placement data for departments based on student input for the Academic Program Review process.

If a department collects student placement data in other ways, however, they can enhance the review with that.

Deans have the discretion to approve an in-person APR process. Deans will identify the budget source for the process.