Gallaudet Regroups
Panel to Reaffirm Accreditation of College for the Deaf, Which Has Undergone a Transformation Since '06 Strife

By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 28, 2008

A year and a half after student protesters shut down Gallaudet University for several days and accreditors warned of major problems, the school for the deaf got good news yesterday: Its accreditation will be reaffirmed.

The stamp of approval from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education caps months of work and transformation: new leadership, a new curriculum, a new emphasis on sign language, a new push to prove results with solid data and a new tranquility at an institution once torn apart over a presidential selection.

The commission's vote to reaffirm Gallaudet's accreditation, confirmed yesterday by Vice President Linda Suskie, is an important step for the school. It never lost accreditation, which higher education officials say is effectively a death knell for a university, but the past months of probation and then a warning from the commission have hobbled its ability to recruit students and keep up enrollment.

Now, administrators and others on campus are beginning to talk about the school's long-term future and how the university can stay relevant in a world that has changed for deaf people.

"We have had rough times," President Robert Davila said. "We are over that." Although the process has been painful, the upheaval and the overhaul have been good for the school, he said. "We are better for the events that took place."

Frank H. Wu, vice chairman of the board of trustees, said, "President Davila has brought a wonderful sense of calm, brought together constituencies that were engaged in a civil war before his arrival."

But challenges remain. The school needs to start looking for the next president soon. Davila was hired quickly as an interim leader when protests forced the board to terminate the incoming president's contract. The trustees were so pleased with him that they asked him to stay through December 2009. The board will meet this summer to discuss launching a presidential search that won't return the community to chaos.

Davila has pledged that he and his staff will stay out of the search process, avoiding one of the major complaints about the last one.

The campus has quieted down -- a marked contrast from two years ago, when the announcement of a new president touched off protests, with students climbing the stone gates, shouting and waving signs. They said the search process had been unfair, that the administration had ignored the campus community and that Jane K. Fernandes had been an ineffective leader in her previous jobs at Gallaudet.

Fernandes said at the time that the protests, which died down over the summer and then flared up again after students returned in the fall, were a sign of a cultural divide in the deaf community.

It was a time of profound change, when technological and medical advances were making it possible for far more deaf children to hear and public policy was steering children to mainstream schools rather than residential schools for the deaf dominated by sign language. So part of the debate was over the importance of sign language and whether it was central to Gallaudet's role. Another part involved accusations of declining standards, lapses in academic integrity, racial tensions and other problems.

After the protests shut the school in the fall, accreditors started looking closer at Gallaudet. They delayed its reaccreditation, and last June the school was put on probation.

Accreditors said the school was out of compliance on eight of the 14 standards and asked it to overhaul enrollment, academic standards, campus culture and other areas by this November.

If the school lost its accreditation, it would effectively lose its credibility and have to fight harder to recruit students, who have more options than in the past.

"Twenty-five years ago, if you were deaf and smart, you went to Gallaudet," Wu said. But cochlear implants that help children hear and a disabilities law that requires all schools to accommodate deaf students enable youths to go wherever they want.

Gallaudet has added recruitment tactics and an emphasis on tracking and helping students as they adjust to college so they stay in school.

School officials and more than 100 faculty members worked through last summer on, among other things, a new curriculum for the freshman class designed to move students more quickly into specialized courses for their majors. That didn't go through without criticism. Some professors complained that the changes were railroaded over the summer and that students aren't getting enough traditional instruction in basics such as writing essays. One longtime faculty member, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she said dissent on campus is discouraged, said it felt like a truck hurtling toward a brick wall without brakes: There hadn't been enough time to redesign courses, let alone the entire curriculum .

The school raised admissions standards and worked to increase academic rigor, but not without losing students. It had 281 new undergraduates in 2006 and 226 last fall. Between semesters this school year, it lost a quarter of the entering class. Some professors blamed the new curriculum for the decrease. Davila said he thinks the delay in reaccreditation and the time on probation lost Gallaudet about 300 students. The decrease in students is a significant problem for a school whose enrollment has been shrinking for years.

The university created an office for institutional research. The new system for evaluating student learning is so effective that one member of the commission, Jonathan C. Gibralter, president of Frostburg State University, said it could be a model for other schools.

Gallaudet has a new mission, including the creation of a bilingual environment in which the school hopes to help everyone become fluent in English and American Sign Language and students with all types of deafness and ways of communicating are welcome, Davila said.

The commission made the "very strong observation -- condemnation is too strong a word -- but strong observation that there was a lack of climate of respect for the diversity of people and opinions on this campus and that is why we had the protest," Davila said. The school is working with consultants and taking other action to change that.

Faculty and students told accreditors that they have a greater voice on campus now but that there are tensions. Some professors said there is too much emphasis on sign language.

Commission officials said the campus climate remains a concern and will be the biggest challenge.

"Now the challenge is: Now that the crisis is over, what are we going to do now?" Wu said. "What is this university going to look like over the next generation?"