The HLC expects that institutions always be engaged in quality improvement.
Northern Illinois University’s HLC quality initiative was "Success in Gateway Courses for All Students."
The principal purpose of the quality initiative was to support all of our students to achieve their academic goals by assessing, improving and modifying approaches in gateway courses to support higher levels of student success. Of particular importance was ensuring success for students from underrepresented populations.
The quality initiative had the following goals:
Identify and redesign gateway courses with low success rates or high equity gaps.
Assess and deploy support for course transformation or other improvements in the identified courses to enhance student success.
Monitor data from and engage in continuous quality improvement of identified courses to enhance student success in courses and beyond (e.g., retention and graduation).