Accreditation

The Middle States Commission is our secular accreditor, which offers our master’s degrees certain credibility and enables many of our joint degrees with partner institutions. The Association of Theological Schools is our guild accreditor, which enables us to serve a variety of denominational traditions in the training of pastors. However, accreditation not only communicates to the outside world that our degrees are accountable to certain benchmarks, it also invites us the periodic opportunity to explore, examine, and speak into how well we feel we are living into our mission as institution. In keeping with our Reformed heritage, the accreditation invites us to listen to our constituents and ourselves, name the truth about what we discover, deepen the strengths we find, and repair the issues that we discover. Accreditation is one way to make space to live the call to be Reformed and always reforming as a community. 

Accreditation takes place every 8 to 10 years, and requires the collaboration of the entire PTS community. While the co-chairs of the Self-Study Committee help organize the process and later assemble the necessary report, Working Groups comprised of staff, students, and faculty create an ordered plan to explore questions related to the standards set forth by both the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and The Association of Theological Schools and to keep the community apprised of the process and what is being learned.

As they begin working on the plan they have designed (called the “Self-Study Design”), they will be reaching out to even more members of the community for documentation and conversation around the standards named by our accreditors as well the three priorities that the community has identified through prior conversations with faculty, staff, and Cabinet.

Working Groups will then analyze the materials they received and document the conversations they have, creating a comprehensive picture of the current state of PTS, along with how we relate to the standards and our priorities, and suggestions for how we might increase our efficiency and faithfulness to our mission in the future. This final document will be compiled and shared with our peer accreditors for the Middle States visit in April of 2023 and the ATS visit in September 2023. From there the accreditors will evaluate us for accreditation, and we should hear back from Middle States in the second half of 2023 and from ATS in 2024.

Click on the image below to see a full-size version detailing our accreditation timeline.

The Middle States Standards are fully articulated here, but fall under the following headings:

1. Mission and Goals
2. Ethics and Integrity
3. Design and Delivery of the Student Learning Experience
4. Support of the Student Experience
5. Educational Effectiveness Assessment
6. Planning, Resources, and Institutional Improvement
7. Governance, Leadership, and Administration

The Association of Theological Schools Standards are fully articulated here, but fall under the following headings:

1. Mission and Integrity
2. Planning and Evaluation
3. Student Learning and Formation
4. Master’s Degree Programs
5. Doctoral Degree Programs
6. Library and Information Services
7. Student Services
8. Faculty
9. Governance and Administration
10. Institutional Resources

PRIORITY 1

Strengthen an institutional culture that prioritizes formative practices leading to student success.

PTS will identify and assess the range of practices that shape our common life and culture, for example, worship, communal meals, reflective pedagogical practices, mentoring within and outside the institution, intellectual inquiry, and community engagement. We will assess how practices form and equip students for success academically, professionally, spiritually, and interpersonally. Measures will include placement rates, ordination exam success, and evidence of self-awareness and leadership capacity. Practices will be evaluated for depth and consistency of participation, and their impact will be tracked across all programs of the institution. The investment of resources dedicated to formative practices and the engagement of students across the institution will be explored, assessed, and adjusted to empower increased student success.

PRIORITY 2

Strengthen institutional effectiveness through transparent communication, systems and procedures for accountability, and the use of data to inform decision making.

PTS students are formed in community, so they are formed by the way the PTS community communicates, holds itself accountable, and makes decisions. This self-study will clarify the flow of power and responsibility and orient it, along with the flow of information, toward a dynamic, trustworthy, and empowering institutional culture. Structures for individual and communal accountability will be expanded, standardized, and clarified to foster both trust and collaboration across departments and at various institutional levels. These structures will include professional review processes, procedures for aligning institutional, departmental and individual employee goals, a strategic budgeting process, and goals tailored for each department based on the budgeting cycle. We will evaluate our processes of collecting and disseminating appropriate data, whether qualitative, quantitative, direct, and/or indirect, toward the goals of informed decision making and institutional effectiveness. Continued clarity around data and its use will enable PTS to act in well-aligned ways to be more agile, effective, and empowered as a student-serving institution.  Given this, we will continue to assess the efficiency of our internal and external communication in order to build trust and enable collaboration across the institution to promote student success.

PRIORITY 3

Cultivate, evaluate, and extend relationships with external partners and stakeholders.

PTS will connect in generative ways to relevant external partners and foster connections between internal stakeholders and those partners. Partnerships will be leveraged not only to prepare students for success beyond their time at PTS, but to offer a variety of formative perspectives for their learning in real time as a part of their studies. Forming and maintaining broad partnerships will facilitate intellectual freedom and content area specialization while supporting the particularity of student experience. As PTS makes partnership decisions across the institution, various offices will be empowered to initiate, maintain, and assess partnerships in a way that reflects emerging institutional identity, student needs, and community values as articulated through appropriate channels of governance. Effective student service will be empowered across the institution through mapping where partnership decisions are currently made and by what metrics, evaluating which partnerships are thriving and generative, and discerning which are no longer helpful or appropriate. Dynamic and trusting partnerships with organizations such as judicatories, national denominational offices, local non-profits, community organizations, feeder churches, and local colleges and universities enable support for prospective students through program graduates. A working knowledge of the network of institutional partners will enable PTS to connect students, faculty, and staff with appropriate partners and align institutional movement strategically, leveraging connections for the good of PTS students in service to our mission.

These institutional priorities align with the PTS Mission statement in the following ways:

SECTION I: INSTITUTIONAL OVERVIEW

This section orients our accreditors to PTS, our history, our particulars, our story, and our recent transitions, trials, and triumphs.

SECTION II: INSTITUTIONAL PRIORITIES TO BE ADDRESSED IN THE SELF-STUDY

This is where we introduce the three priorities we selected across the community as we prepared for this self-study. In conversation with staff, faculty, cabinet, and Board, we established the three priorities not as strategic goals (we will have more than three of those), but as areas of focus for this study, so that we might better understand and practice the commitments named therein, in our common life.

SECTION III: INTENDED OUTCOMES OF THE SELF-STUDY

These are our institutional goals as we undertake this process. Certainly we hope to be re-accredited (that is one of the goals!), but in keeping with our commitment to both living and working faithfully, we hope that this process with find us not only achieving things, but practicing collaborating as the seminary community we are called to be as well.

SECTION IV: SELF STUDY APPROACH

In the Middle States Accreditation process, you can choose to be assessed on the standards they name, or you can name your own institutional priorities and show how you meet the standards through those priorities. PTS has chosen the “standards” approach, at the recommendation of our liaison to Middle States and because it allows us to focus on living the fundamentals well in a season of so much transition.

SECTION V: ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE STEERING COMMITTEE AND WORKING GROUPS

This section reflects who is participating on in the Self-Study process in formal ways, what particular tasks they are charged with and in relationship to which Middle States standards, and what questions (or “Lines of Inquiry”) they will be exploring to articulate those standards at PTS. It lists the Self-Study Committee co-chairs, the Communication Committee, the Working Group Chairs and members. Not named here are all the other stakeholders in the institution who will also collaborate on this process—those who will share evidence or offer reflection to the working groups as they seek information and documentation, those who will help us manage the IT side of this process, those who will take on extra work as their colleagues step way to manage this process, students who will offer feedback, board members who will offer encouragement, even you, humble reader, whose learning on this topic may well bear fruit in a conversation with our accreditors when they come to visit in April and September of 2023.

SECTION VI: GUIDELINES FOR REPORTING

This section explores the form that the Working Group process will take, how they will share their findings with the Self-Study Committee, and in what time frame.

SECTION VII: ORGANIZATION OF THE FINAL SELF-STUDY REPORT

This section outlines what the final Self-Study Report to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education will look like in order to give the various teams working on that final product a sense of what they are building toward.

SECTION VIII: VERIFICATION OF COMPLIANCE STRATEGY

This section particularly addresses who will collect the relevant documentation of our compliance to the accreditation-relevant federal regulations named by Middle States, as well as how that data will be collected.

SECTION IX: SELF-STUDY TIMETABLE

The section gives an arc and overview of the accreditation process, to help the reader see where we are in the accreditation process at any point.

SECTION X: COMMUNICATION PLAN

This section maps how the Self-Study Committee will communicate to the broader seminary community the progress, findings, and conclusions of the Self-Study process.

SECTION XI: EVALUATION TEAM PROFILE

This section describes what sort of leaders, from what sort of institutions we will want to conduct our Self-Study visit. We are seeking leaders who would understand the sort of school we are and the particular issues we are facing. This section gives a sense of our peer schools, as well as the areas we hope to illuminate further with our Self-Study process.

SECTION XII: EVIDENCE INVENTORY

This section describes who will manage the data collected in the process and how it will be organized both for analysis by our Working Groups and for submission to our Middle States accreditors.

Source: Community News, February 2024, for employees and shared with Board

Last summer, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education placed PTS on warning for Standard V (Educational Effectiveness Assessment). This means we are required to submit a report providing additional evidence of our work to assess student learning as well as our broader institutional effectiveness. That report was submitted on Jan. 16, and now we are preparing to host the follow-up team on the PTS campus Feb. 21-22. This visit will not be as involved as the reaccreditation visit in the spring of 2023, but you may be invited to a meeting with the visiting team to talk about either assessment of student learning or our newly implemented institutional effectiveness process.

Meanwhile, we are waiting to hear if the Association of Theological Schools will affirm the positive report we received from the team that visited us last September. The ATS Board of Commissioners convenes Feb. 5-6, 2024, and we expect to know more within 30 days of that meeting.

Source: Community News, January 2024, for employees and shared with Board

A new year, an almost completed accreditation process! The Association of Theological Schools has completed its accreditation visit with us and while that went very positively, we will hear from them officially after their meeting this coming spring. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education has requested two reports from us, both of which are due this month. After that we will welcome them this spring for an additional visit, which should make the way clear for our accreditation with them for the next eight years. This has been a long process. We appreciate your good work and are hopeful for the fruit this accreditation process will bear, not only in our being able to offer degrees for the next eight years, but in preparing us as a community for the strategic planning process. May the good work continue. 

Source: Community News, December 2023, for employees and shared with Board

As we move toward the holidays, the PTS community continues to celebrate the completion of our primary accreditation visits from both the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE—our secular accreditor) and The Association of Theological Schools (ATS—our guild accreditor). The teams for both of these visits offer positive reports, and while we do have some updates to provide our Middle States accreditors in January, we won’t hear anything further from ATS until their meeting in the spring. We will also welcome an additional visit from Middle States in the spring, so you will likely hear more about cardigans and name tags when the time comes. Until then, we continue to do the work rooted in our mission. Thank you all for your partnership and diligence in the accreditation process. 
 

Source: Community News, November 2023, for employees and shared with Board

The PTS community has now completed its primary accreditation visits from both the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE—our secular accreditor) and The Association of Theological Schools (ATS—our guild accreditor). While the recommendation from the ATS visit team still needs to go before the larger ATS meeting in the spring, we had a positive response to that visit and are particularly grateful for how well this community welcomed the ATS visit team. For our Middle States Accreditation, we have two required reports due in January that are currently in process, as well as a supplemental visit we will need to host this coming spring. We will keep you in the loop about those dates and trust you will be your lovely selves for our visitors then as you have been through this whole process. Thank you all for your good and diligent work. We are almost through the tunnel and back out into the light of our goal to be One, Effective, Engaged, and Accredited Seminary.
 

Source: Community News, October 2023, for employees and shared with Board

Last month the Seminary underwent its Association of Theological Schools accreditation visit. Great news: the visitation team will recommend to the ATS Board of Commissioners that the Seminary’s accreditation be reaffirmed for 10 years and issued no warnings or requirements. They affirmed several distinctive strengths of the Seminary, including a self-reflective and adaptive institutional environment, a culture of integration and collegiality across departments, a collaborative approach to student services, and the accomplishment of goals in the last strategic plan. The team recommended that the Seminary pay special attention to patterns of communication being consistently applied, meaning less reliance on an oral culture and more reliance on written policies, as well as continued development of the Doctor of Ministry program as it grows, and balancing the increasing load on faculty as they teach in different modalities. The team is requiring that the Seminary provide reports on workload balance across the Seminary—faculty, staff, and administration—and on continued progress in educational evaluation. There is still work ahead as the visitation team’s recommendations will be forwarded to the ATS Board of Commissioners, where final action will be taken at its board meeting in January. Our hope and expectation is that the Board of Commissioners will adopt the team’s findings. Until that time, we will continue the work on our monitoring report for MSCHE, which is due this winter, and we will begin the next strategic planning process, where many of these recommendations will be implemented.
 

Source: Community News, September 2023, for employees and shared with Board

As we start the fall semester, the excitement of new classes, new students, and new learning is blending with the exciting truth that this is the last fall of our two-pronged decennial accreditation process! The PTS community has put in great work to share our story with our accreditors, and in this season we are preparing for our accreditation visit from The Association of Theological Schools (ATS) as well as a follow-up visit from our Middle States Commission (MSCHE) liaison. From here we will prepare a follow-up report for MSCHE by January 2024, and should hear back on our accreditation disposition from ATS after their meeting in the spring. In preparation for the ATS visit, students, faculty, and staff: please mark your calendars for a community lunch Sept. 13 at 12:00 p.m. We’ll talk about our shared work, and invite faculty and staff to pick up their PTS sweaters or polo shirts so we’re ready to look the part for the coming visit. We also remind you to locate and dust off your gold name tag for the occasion. We’ll need it for Sept. 18-21, when our ATS accreditors join us on campus. This process has felt long—we are almost there!
 

Source: Community News, August 2023, for employees and shared with Board

ATS

It is certainly summer outside, but PTS is preparing for our fall accreditation visit from The Association of Theological Schools. All staff and faculty have been given the chance to order some PTS gear in preparation for the visit, and we hope all members of the community (faculty, staff, and students) will join us for a catered community lunch Sept. 13 to pick up their new gear and spend some time together talking PTS. Watch your inbox for a chance to sign up coming soon. In the meantime, we continue to be grateful for the broad community participation in accreditation, the seriousness with which the community has taken to sharing our story and good work, and the welcome you have offered accreditors—and really, all visitors—to campus in this season.

Middle States

Our work with Middle States continues, and we will have a follow up visit in September, which will give us a sense of what is needed for next steps. For now, we are continuing to learn from this process and look forward to the fruit this work will bear in the months to come.

Source: Community News, July 2023, for employees and shared with Board

Middle States

The Middle States Board of Commissioners voted to warn PTS for potentially not being in compliance with Standard V on Educational Assessment. While this is not entirely a surprise it is certainly a disappointment. It is not a surprise because in our self-study, we indicated that we had more work to do on educational assessment on provided evidence of that work. While on warning, PTS remains fully accredited. We have been given additional guidance about providing a monitoring report with updates on our progress in the Educational Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness areas which is due early next year. We already knew we needed to do this work of systematizing our assessment and institutional effectiveness; now we will have greater scrutiny to the work we will do.

ATS

Even in the summer, the accreditation process continues. Currently our faithful Board Executive Committee is reviewing and (if the way be clear) accepting our ATS Self-Study Report. Once they have approved the document, it will be placed in the proper format, along with evidence and various supporting documents, bound, and mailed to our colleagues at The Association of Theological Schools in preparation for that accreditation visit, Sept. 18-21, 2023. As you enjoy the summer sun and hopefully some time to rest, spare a thought for the coming ATS visit. We’ll be preparing right as the semester begins and we want to be ready to welcome our peer accreditors with both enthusiasm and PTS expertise! Thank you for all your good work over these two years. It is amazing what a community of people with common vision and common purpose can do together in this process.

Source: Community News, June 2023, for employees and shared with Board

As you may have come to expect, the accreditation work of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary—both for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) and The Association of Theological Schools (ATS)—is marching forward! At the end of this month, MSCHE will have their annual meeting, at which point we will hear back about their final disposition on our report and the visit we hosted in March 2023. Our ATS report has received community wide comment (thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us!) and is in final editing. From here, that report will go to the ATS in July for their review before our accreditation visit with them in September 2023. Because this visit will happen right after the summer, keep your eyes on your e-mail in the coming weeks as we get as much planned as possible before folks head out for their various summer adventures. This community did such an incredible job hosting MSCHE and we are excited to host ATS with similar strength and hospitality. Again, thank you for such faithful work in this process. It has felt like a long, all-hands-on-deck journey, but we are ever closer to a complete accreditation cycle, and there is much to be proud of in what we have been able to do together in service to the Mission of PTS.

Source: Community News, May 2023, for employees and shared with Board

Another milestone in the Accreditation process has come for us! The ATS Self-Study Report is currently circulating for community comment. There is much to celebrate—and, of course, after an encouraging and lively visit from our Middle States accreditors, the work continues on our report to ATS. We hope you will read over the document (which has come to all faculty, staff, students, and Board members via e-mail) and offer comment, clarification, and information that perhaps only you have. This report will be edited again by the full Self-Study Steering Committee, based on your comments, and by mid-July it will head across town to our ATS accreditation team. That team will visit PTS in September, just as the MSCHE folks did in March. It’s not long now, PTS team. Keep sharing your stories, keep living the mission of this place, and as always, if you have any accreditation queries, contact Karen Rohrer or Angela Hancock.

Source: Community News, February 2023, for employees and shared with Board

March is a big month for Accreditation at PTS! As chapters for the report to The Association of Theological Schools (ATS) are edited and finalized, the community continues to prepare for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education’s (MSCHE) visit to campus at the end of March. The ATS report is coming together nicely and will be shared with the full PTS community for comment, just as the MSCHE report was, later this spring. Your feedback and engagement with the document not only makes it richer and more honest, it reflects to leadership where energy and excitement are building in the broader system. We hope you will take some time to look over it when it is shared. As for the MSCHE accreditation visit, we’ll have six peer professionals from other schools coming to learn and explore PTS. While they are here there will be an open call for community members to speak with the visitors as well as many smaller group meetings March 26-29. Keep your eyes peeled in your e-mail for more information! We’ll also have a community lunch March 22 to keep our common work fresh in our minds for the visit, and we hope you will join us for that as well. When the visit comes around please wear your PTS name badges (contact Josie Hoover if you don’t have one!), and greet graciously anyone who looks like they might be new to the space (in fact, that second part can be a standard procedure!). Thank you all for your good work in researching and writing these important documents and being ready to welcome the accreditors when they visit.

Source: Community News, February 2023, for employees and shared with Board

We are in the midst of the Venn Diagram of our two accreditation processes, as we upload our Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) Report document this month and prepare for our MSCHE visit as a community while the drafting of our report for The Association of Theological Schools (ATS) continues. Depending on where you are within the PTS community, you may find yourself researching, writing, editing, discussing over lunch, uploading documents, or even scheduling visit events. This is truly the high season for our accreditation process. Thank you so much for all you have done to share our story with our accreditors and to ensure accountability for our work in an ongoing way. We are on our way to being a re-ACCREDITED(!!) Seminary!

Source: Community News, January 2023, for employees and shared with Board

Our Middle States Commission on Higher Education Self-Study Report, a document that was created by collaborators across PTS, will be uploaded to our Accreditation team this month! Now that the document along with hundreds of evidence documents are finalized, we turn our attention to preparing for their visit at the end of March. Our community has worked together for countless hours to tell our story honestly and well, to name the truths and possibilities we have found, and to properly reflect that in a comprehensive report about PTS. With that background, we believe this community’s preparations for conversation with the Accreditation team can quite reasonably be combined with some celebration of what we have done and what we have discovered. To that end, community members will be invited to two lunches for fellowship and conversation about not only the visit, but how each member of the community fits within the mission shared in our report. Campus community members, please look out for invitations coming your way soon!

Source: Community News, December 2022, for employees and shared with Board

As always, the PTS accreditation processes are moving forward, thanks to the tireless effort of dozens of faculty, staff, and administrators collaborating to tell our story honestly and well (with clear supporting evidence!). With the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) report accepted by the PTS Board, we have uploaded it to the MSCHE portal, where our Accreditation Chair, Father Ed Mazich, will be able to access it along with the rest of our MSCHE accreditation team, which is currently being assembled. They will read our materials there and be prepared to talk with us about it on their spring visit, scheduled for March 26-29, 2023, on campus. As we move toward that target date, we will not only be preparing as a campus for that visit, but we will continue to collaborate on another self-study report for The Association of Theological Schools. This continued research will keep us sharp and engaged for the spring visit, while also preparing our report for ATS, so that by the close of 2023, we will have completed both accreditation cycles. This has been and will continue to be a full campus effort, and we are so grateful for the way you all have shown up to support the accreditation process so PTS’s excellence in education and formation might faithfully continue. Keep your eyes on this space for more updates as we keep moving forward. 

Source: Community News, November 2022, for employees and shared with Board

The Accreditation Self-Study work continues as the leaves change. In early October, PTS hosted our Middle States Accreditation chair, Fr. Ed Mazich, and he shared in conversation with individuals from across the institution and offered feedback on the Self-Study Report. At their November meeting, the Board will vote to officially accept the report and from there it will be submitted to Middle States for review by our entire Accreditation team, led by Fr. Mazich. In the meantime, research on our Self-Study for The Association of Theological Schools has begun and working groups are again gathering evidence and answering questions to tell the PTS story in a new way for ATS as our guild accreditor. As both accreditation processes happen simultaneously, we are particularly grateful to the whole PTS community who has researched, listened, created, shared, and collaborated to make this possible. Thank you for your good work!

PTS Mission: Participating in God’s ongoing mission in the world, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary is a community of Christ joining in the Spirit’s work of forming and equipping people for ministries familiar and yet to unfold and communities present and yet to be gathered.

Source: Community News, October 2022, for employees and shared with Board

Because of our commitment to academic excellence, partnerships with other institutions, and identity as a graduate theological school, Pittsburgh Seminary has two accreditors: the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and The Association of Theological Schools. Our accreditation schedules for each overlap, so that as we finalize our Middle States Self-Study Report, faithfully stewarded by assessment investigators and the broader Seminary community, we are also doing further investigation in preparation for our ATS Self-Study Report. This month PTS will welcome our Middle States Accreditation chairperson for our readiness visit, even as working groups continue to investigate for ATS. As always, we hope you will continue to help us tell our story by sharing the documentation you have in your various departments. We also hope you will think a bit about the readiness visit, happening Oct. 11, and how we might learn from that visit in preparation for our full Middle States visit this spring and the subsequent ATS visit next fall. How does your role and location at the seminary live out our shared mission? What have you learned in this season of self-study and what do you need to learn to deepen your missional work? Thank you for your partnership—PTS is made by its people.

PTS Mission: Participating in God’s ongoing mission in the world, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary is a community of Christ joining in the Spirit’s work of forming and equipping people for ministries familiar and yet to unfold and communities present and yet to be gathered.

Source: Community News, September 2022, for employees and shared with Board

The Self-Study Report Draft is being revised! Thank you so much to the PTS community for reading, commenting, and sharing insight about our Self-Study Report Draft. The Self-Study Steering Committee is now reading over and processing all the comments so that the draft can be fully edited to share with our Middle States Accreditation Chair by late September. As the new evidence offered is explored and updates are made, the document is becoming more clear and honest and we are learning better how to understand and share our story. Stay tuned in the coming months as we focus on preparing to meet our full Middle States Accreditation Team in the spring. As the new school year starts, there will be community events, conversations on campus, and a continued focus on living out our mission statement in all we do. As you start to think about campus energy rising again, take some time with our mission statement. Maybe even read it aloud. Look at your schedule for the coming months—where does what you are up to fit with this mission? Our different daily tasks feed into a much bigger service to the Church and the work of God in the world. The mission is what unites and powers that work.

PTS Mission: Participating in God’s ongoing mission in the world, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary is a community of Christ joining in the Spirit’s work of forming and equipping people for ministries familiar and yet to unfold and communities present and yet to be gathered.

Source: Community News, August 2022, for employees and shared with Board

The Self-Study Report Draft has been out for internal PTS community comment, and we hope you took the time to read it and share your input. The Self-Study Steering Committee wanted to share a few pieces of information about this draft as we continue to edit and refine it for our Middle States Accreditation team to visit in spring 2023.

• This report has been reviewed, discussed, and edited by the full Self-Study Steering Committee (SSSC) and the SSSC presents it as a group. Although diverse opinions and perspectives are represented on the SSSC, we all feel the issues named warrant further engagement and conversation—whatever shape that may take.
• This report is a draft—the committee may have missed things, and we hope you did or will tell us where we have. This is incredibly helpful and important to the process of getting to an honest and useful Self-Study Report. The SSSC has no illusion of having discovered all the things that we might name about PTS!
• Middle States has asked PTS to tell our story for the last 10 years. In the exploration and research process to prepare for that, a variety of perspectives were sought and heard, and the SSSC got a picture of how much PTS has been experienced differently by different people. The SSSC often repeated our catch phrase as we attempted to do the work with “sympathetic objectivity.” The result of this is that the report reflects a variety of perspectives and experiences which have bubbled up in the conversations engaged and the research undertaken.
• The most important part of the SSSC’s charge is to tell the truth as we discover it, and we are so grateful for the help we have had discovering that truth. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have concerns about the report—it matters to us to get this right much more than it matters that you appreciate our flowing prose.
• The recommendations included in this report will not be implemented solely based on the Self-Study Report recommending them. The listed recommendations are being referred for discussion to the relevant parties who have the authority to address the issues named as they see fit.
• This is one step in the process of preparing for our accreditation visit and starting a conversation for our next strategic planning process. The SSSC hopes that everyone will be a part of these ongoing conversations.

Thank you for your time and participation in the Self-Study process; this process has been time-consuming and at turns both tedious and vulnerable. Y’all have been brave, gracious, and good to each other in this process. We really appreciate it—your participation makes our shared work richer, wiser, and more faithful. – Your SSSC

Source: Community News, July 2022, for employees and shared with Board

So many of you have come to those of us on the Self-Study Steering Committee and said, “When will I get a chance to read this famous self-study?” or “This all sounds like so much fun, how might I participate more?” We have great news; it is almost time! From July 10 to July 31, the Self-Study Report will be circulated for comment from students, staff, faculty, and board, so the report draft with instructions will be coming to your e-mail soon! The Self-Study process has been long and busy, we know, and so many of you have helped us gather documents and share stories. The Self-Study Steering Committee has learned a lot. This committee wants to share what we have learned and also to check our work. You are the experts on this Seminary community. What evidence do you have that we have missed in the report? What parts of the story do we need to be sure to include? We hope you will read the report, engage, comment, and be a part of the story we will share with our accreditors and each other. In this revision process, the Self-Study Report document will still be for the PTS community only, so we ask that you not share it as it continues to be revised. Thank you all for making this community what it is, and helping us tell the story.

- Karen Rohrer, on behalf of the Self-Study Steering Committee

Source: constituent newsletters; included link to Allan Irizarry-Graves' video

Accreditation Update

Accreditation is a process by which peers and colleagues from schools similar to Pittsburgh Theological Seminary evaluate how well we, as PTS, are living up to our mission statement, our professed values, and our strategic priorities.

The Middle States Commission on Higher Education, our secular accreditor, will visit in the Spring of 2023. Our guild accreditor, The Association of Theological Schools, will visit the following year, and because of their similarly contextual approach, we are able to conduct one institution-wide self-study to meet the requirements of both accreditation processes.

For months now, staff, faculty, administrators, and students have been researching the institution, learning about how PTS operates, and making connections about how things are working. The Self-Study team has circulated the draft report for internal feedback and is is wrapping up the report now. 

Source: Community News, June 2022, for employees and shared with Board

Accreditation Update

The Self-Study investigators are continuing to explore big questions, vision ways to do what we do better, and consider the PTS mission statement: Participating in God’s ongoing mission in the world, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary is a community of Christ joining in the Spirit’s work of forming and equipping people for ministries familiar and yet to unfold and communities present and yet to be gathered. Members of the PTS community should have received an invitation to participate in focus group conversations to inform that work. If you are able, please take part of  in these conversations. As all this work starts to coalesce into chapters of our Self-Study, a draft of which will be shared for comment over the summer. Please take time to read what the team has learned and share your feedback. Along with the writing work, the Committee is also starting to plan for our formal Accreditation visits. The chair of our Accreditation Team, Fr. Edward Mazich, will be coming for a preliminary visit Oct. 11, 2022, and will work with PTS at that time to prepare for a full Accreditation Team visit the following spring. In the meantime, think about your role in the institution, how your work supports the mission statement, and what questions you have about this process that the Self-Study Steering Committee can help answer as the Seminary looks forward to the visits. As theses grow closer, you will hear more from the Committee about how it will all be preparing together as a community as well. For now, thank you for all the good work you have done already, working with colleagues, sharing your stories, and preparing the Committee to share our stories with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and the Association of Theological Schools.

Source: Community News, May 2022, for employees and shared with Board

The Self-Study investigators are continuing to explore big questions, vision ways to do what we do better, and consider the PTS mission statement: Participating in God’s ongoing mission in the world, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary is a community of Christ joining in the Spirit’s work of forming and equipping people for ministries familiar and yet to unfold and communities present and yet to be gathered. Members of the PTS community should have received an invitation to participate in focus group conversations to inform that work. If you are able, please take part of  in these conversations. As all this work starts to coalesce into chapters of our Self-Study, a draft of which will be shared for comment over the summer. Please take time to read what the team has learned and share your feedback. Along with the writing work, the Committee is also starting to plan for our formal Accreditation visits. The chair of our Accreditation Team, Fr. Edward Mazich, will be coming for a preliminary visit Oct. 11, 2022, and will work with PTS at that time to prepare for a full Accreditation Team visit the following spring. In the meantime, think about your role in the institution, how your work supports the mission statement, and what questions you have about this process that the Self-Study Steering Committee can help answer as the Seminary looks forward to the visits. As theses grow closer, you will hear more from the Committee about how it will all be preparing together as a community as well. For now, thank you for all the good work you have done already, working with colleagues, sharing your stories, and preparing the Committee to share our stories with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and the Association of Theological Schools.

Source: Community News, April 2022, for employees and shared with Board

The PTS Accreditation Working Groups are continuing the good work of Self-Study, and many staff are fielding questions and evidence requests from the investigators of those groups regarding their various areas of work. This information gathering informs the documentation we will share with our accreditors, but it also helps us to understand some of the good work our colleagues are doing. In addition to the evidence gathering, in February and March, the Self- Study Communications team shared a survey with staff, students, faculty, and Board members to start a conversation about PTS’s mission statement and the process of self-study. Because of such strong participation from the community, we have excellent data to reflect where we are in our self-knowledge as a community, and where we might benefit from further work. As the Self-Study continues, please keep your eyes peeled for more ways to participate. You can read more about the Self-Study process with some background and regular updates at www.pts.edu/Accreditation, and we look forward to sharing our preliminary self-study work for community review in late spring and early summer. After that period, we will host the chair of our Accreditation Team in the fall in preparation for the full accreditation team visit in the spring. Between now and then we invite you to review the mission statement that this self-study continues to return us to, and to consider the work before us to become one accredited, effective, and engaged seminary.

Source: Community News, March 2022, for employees and shared with Board

Our accreditation self-study process is continuing, and evidence files are filling up, as Seminary staff, faculty, and administration share the ins and outs of their work with each other. The Self-Study Steering Committee and Working Groups are beginning to see how our whole system works together. As you likely saw, a survey went out recently to see how the community is thinking about the self-study process, how clear the schedule ahead of us is, and how well we are doing as a community at knowing our mission statement. That survey marks a midway point in our study process, as evidence collection continues through the Spring. After evidence collection and the exploration of our “Lines of Inquiry,” or questions about ourselves, is complete, all we have learned will be compiled into one document, which we share with our accreditors detailing how well we are meeting the standards they name. That document will be circulated so that all in the community can read and comment before it is edited into its final form, and shared with our accreditors before their visit. We hope you will keep following this process and participate in each step as you are able. The goal is to be ready so that when our accreditors come for their visit, any one of us will be able tell the story of PTS, our mission, and our institutional goals.

Source: Community News, February 2022, for employees and shared with Board

Pittsburgh Seminary Self-Study Begins!

As the new year ramps up, your Self-Study Working Groups have gotten to work collecting information from a variety of a departments, learning more about our institutional processes and how we live out our mission. The Self-Study committee is leading the effort, and following the plan and timeline that Middle States approved for us in fall 2021. For the next several months, data will be collected, stories will be shared, and clarity will be gained. Thank you to those who have shared records and stories and wisdom already, and to those we have yet to reach out to, we hope you will share the particular wisdom of your department with us as we come to ask. As we do this work together, we know that the strength of our study (and thus any learning or ideas gained from that work) will depend on the voices that guide the process. We are glad that the PTS community is in this together and grateful for your willingness to help guide the work.

To: Students
From: Associate Dean Ayana Teter

Students Share on the PTS Accreditation Process

As a second-year M.Div student, I’m deeply invested in making sure Pittsburgh Theological Seminary has a successful future, which may sound odd considering I’m a remote student. I’ve never lived in Pennsylvania, nor do I intend to, but this institution has had a special place in my heart going back years before I was a full-time student. Our most famous alum, Fred Rogers, had a global impact on the minds and hearts of everyday people, and there’s no reason why his cherished seminary should strive for anything less. Covid may temporarily dampen the vibrancy of campus life, but God is doing a new thing by expanding the seminary’s borders far beyond the city of Pittsburgh. How thoroughly our leaders have embraced the future of learning shaped by the pandemic is already ushering in a new vibrancy as students from around the world start to receive the excellent education that for so long was limited to those near campus.

This pride I feel in the education I’m receiving and my optimism for the seminary’s future is the reason I answered the call to serve on the steering committee for our re-accreditation. The self-study is at once a requirement and an opportunity. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education requires institutions to show proof that what they say they do is actually what they have been doing. But for any institution worth the weight of its degrees, that should be a pretty low bar to clear. The opportunity afforded in such an audit is that institution gets to reflect on what it discovers about itself so that it can become a better version of itself. Is that not what we already do as God’s people? So, over the next year, as elements of the self-study draw near you, or draw you in for a time, I ask you to join me in embracing the opportunity to be a part of the journey the seminary is taking. Together, we can ensure it is well-positioned to keep reaching students for the cause of Christ, wherever they might be in the world.  

Andy Hill, Second Year MDi. Student, Student Member of the Institutional Self-Study Team

Sources: Community News, December 2021, for employees and shared with Board; President's Communique, December 2021, for friends and alums of the Seminary 

Middle States and Association of Theological Schools Reaccreditation Updates 

Pittsburgh Seminary is embarking on an 18-month journey of self-study as part of our decennial accreditation process with our secular and guild accreditation bodies, Middle States Commission on Higher Education and The Association of Theological Schools, respectively. The self-study is an institution-wide self-examination of our effectiveness in executing our educational mission. In November, the Seminary received from Middle States formal approval of our self-study design and commended our self-study steering committee for thorough and engaging work. With this approval, we are clear to begin the self-study process that will guide us for the next year. The Seminary’s self-study process guarantees the quality of the theological education we provide. We will provide updates as the process continues.

Source: E-mail from President Lee to staff and faculty

Colleagues,

As we prepare to adjourn for the Thanksgiving holiday, I write with a bit of good news. Yesterday evening Leanna and I received a communique from Dr. Terrance Peavy, our Middle States liaison for the self-study and accreditation process. In that letter, he provided us with the formal approval of our self-study design and commended our self-study steering committee for thorough and engaging work. With this approval, we are clear to begin the self-study process that will guide us for the next year.

I cannot stress how proud I am of the work that our steering committee has done. Major thanks to Dr. Angela Hancock and Rev. Karen Rohrer for outstanding leadership and for getting us started and across the first, of what will be many, finish lines.

Collectively, there is still much work to do, but for now, we can pat ourselves on the back for catching up and being on time and on schedule for our reaccreditation work.

Please have a happy and safe Thanksgiving Holiday and blessings to each of you.

With Gratitude,

Asa

Source: Community News, November 2021, for employees and shared with Board

Middle State and Associate of Theological Schools Reaccreditation Updates

On Nov. 5, our Middle States liaison, Dr. Terence Peavy, will be with us for our “readiness visit”—a series of virtual meetings about the Self-Study and re-accreditation process. From 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. there will be an open session for students, staff, and faculty to hear more about reaccreditation. Dr. Peavy will discuss the role of faculty, staff, and students in the Self-Study process and answer any questions about the Self-Study specifically or Middle States re-accreditation more generally. Please consider dropping in to be a part of the conversation! Check your PTS e-mail for the Zoom link.

Source: Community News October 2021, for employees and shared with Board

Middle State and Associate of Theological Schools Reaccreditation Updates

The self-study process is officially underway! The self-study steering committee began meeting in September and is hard at work on a self-study design for PTS. The design will be presented to our Middle States liaison officers in November, and then the tasks of gathering evidence and drafting reports will begin in earnest. The members of the self-study steering committee are as follows: Angela Hancock (Steering Committee Co-Chair), Karen Rohrer (Steering Committee Co-Chair), Edwin van Driel, Barbara Blodgett, Erin Davenport, Tracy Riggle Young, Ken Woo, Nancy Lowmaster (Board member and alum), Allan Irizarry-Graves (Board member and alum), Sarita Robinson (student), Andy Hill (student), and Holly McKelvey. 

Source: E-mail from President Lee to staff and faculty

Dear Colleagues,

As you have heard over the last few weeks, PTS is embarking on a 18 month journey of self-study as part of our decennial accreditation process with our secular and guild accreditation bodies. The self-study is an institution wide self-examination of our effectiveness in executing our educational mission. To facilitate this work, a self-study steering committee has been assembled and staffed to guide us through this process. Dr. Angela Hancock and Rev. Karen Rohrer are co-chairs of this committee and will begin this week rolling out engagement of this process.

As members of this community, it is important that we all take part of this work. Some of you may be receiving emails inviting you to participate more directly in the work groups of the self-study. The cabinet and I have done work preparing managers and supervisors to allow for greater flexibility around accomplishing the work of the self-study. So if you receive an invitation, I am asking that you consult with your supervisor or department leader in order to find a way for you to accept this invitation to be part of this important work of assessment.

Even if you do not receive a direct invitation to participate, we all are invested in the successful completion of the self-study in order to be reaffirmed in our accreditation.

Thank you for your willingness to serve in this way and for your commitment to our mission.

Best,

Asa

Source: Community News, September 2021, for employees and shared with Board

Middle State and Associate of Theological Schools Reaccreditation Updates

In 2023, PTS will be seeking reaccreditation from both the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) and the Association of Theological Schools (ATS). That sounds like a long way away - but in order for us to reach important benchmarks in both reaccreditation processes, our work must begin in earnest now. This institution-wide project will be guided by a Self-Study Committee, which will include faculty, staff, Board members, and students. The Self-Study Committee will oversee specific sub-committees, each of which will work on gathering evidence to show how we are meeting particular MSCHE and ATS standards. Between now and 2023, almost everyone at PTS will be involved in the self-study process. Although it will be a lot of work, it will also be a unique opportunity