What activities and passions truly light up your life outside of your work with OPAIR?
I’ve always been a bookworm, and I usually have at least one book and an audiobook going at the same time. My sons have gotten me into video games, and I can easily lose an entire weekend with a new game. I like to garden and putter about in the yard and generally enjoy being outside as much as possible. The weather in Texas is amazing most of the year, and it is sunny and mild in the winter, which is great.
I also love to travel and try to plan at least one big trip every year or so with my sons. Most recently, we’ve done Ireland, Scotland, Greece, Iceland, and Mexico, and we plan to visit Japan this December. My goal is to squeeze in Africa before they all get jobs and spouses, and it becomes harder to schedule big trips.
Could you share your professional background and explain how it has guided you to your role at OPAIR?
I’m an attorney, and that training serves me well in the field of accreditation and compliance. I enjoy research and am used to parsing the language of the law to break down the necessary elements for compliance. Before working at Penn State, my work was primarily adversarial, representing my client’s interests in opposition to the interests of the other side. I love that my work here is team-oriented, working towards a shared goal.
Can you describe a typical day for a Director of Accreditation? What are your key responsibilities?
Each day is different. My role is essentially to remain an expert in all things Middle States. The Middle States Commission for Higher Education (MSCHE) is Penn State’s institutional accreditor, and compliance with MSCHE standards and requirements is essential for the University to remain able to receive Title IV financial aid funds and to provide students and the public confidence in the quality of a Penn State education. I field a lot of accreditation questions from different units across the University. I read a lot to keep up with changes in regulations and accreditation requirements. We take scheduled accreditation actions as part of the routine accreditation cycle, and we frequently prepare out-of-cycle reports to respond to various MSCHE inquiries. I help with some reporting requirements, such as foreign gift and contract reporting, and keep track of the various professional accreditors who accredit programs such as engineering, nursing, and law. Lance always has interesting projects for me to tackle.
What aspects of your role inspire you, and which aspects do you find the most rewarding?
Since I am generally a team of one, I enjoy working with other members of OPAIR and working with and getting to know people across the University. Pulling so many people together for the MSCHE Self-Study for the past few years was very challenging and rewarding. I am continuously surprised at how frequently I refer back to the self-study report to obtain information to cite in one report or another.
How would you say OPAIR (or Penn State as a whole) has pushed you professionally?
When I came to Penn State in 2017, I immersed myself in an entirely new field. The culture and politics of a large organization and the regulatory landscape were all foreign to me, but I relished the challenge and have learned so much in my time here.