EDN 814 Module 7 Accreditation as a Leadership Decision Example

The Dean's Decision: Accreditation as a Test of Nursing Leadership, Resources and Honesty

Student Name

Doctor of Education Program, Aspen University

EDN 814: Nursing Accreditation and Advocacy in the Profession

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

The Dean's Decision: Accreditation as a Test of Nursing Leadership, Resources and Honesty

Wexcombe College's nursing school had three deans in the six years before its current dean arrived. Faculty describe those years as a time when accreditation was handled by whoever was available, reports were written the month they were due, and decisions about curriculum and staffing were made without reference to the program's own data. The current dean has treated accreditation differently: as a set of leadership decisions about resources, people and honesty that shape the program every year, not only in the year of a visit. This paper examines accreditation as a test of nursing leadership, drawing on evidence about what distinguishes strong programs and on the standards' own demands.

The Decisions Accreditation Forces

Accreditation forces a dean to decide things that could otherwise drift. How many full-time faculty are enough, and with what preparation? Which clinical sites are good enough to keep? What will the program do when a cohort's licensure pass rate falls? How much faculty time will the school protect for evaluation and curriculum work? Each standard implies a leadership choice, and the self-study records whether those choices were made deliberately. An accreditor reads a program's documents much as a board reads a chief executive's: for evidence that someone is steering.

Leadership Stability and Faculty Mix

Leadership itself shows up in the evidence on program quality. In the National Council of State Boards of Nursing's study of five years of state board annual reports, programs that were fully approved with first-time pass rates of 80% or higher were more likely to have had no more than three program directors in five years and a director with a doctorate; a marginally significant finding linked more than 35% full-time faculty to the same outcomes (Spector et al., 2020). The study's review of board site visit records found that failing programs often had high faculty turnover, faculty with little preparation in teaching, heavy workloads and little faculty development. Wexcombe's leadership churn before the current dean was, in this light, a quality problem, not only an administrative one.

Resources the Dean Must Secure

Accreditation standards require resources sufficient for the program's mission, and the dean must win them from a college with other priorities. The table lists the main requests for the next two years.

Workload and Burnout

Accreditation work lands on faculty who are also teaching, supervising clinical groups and advising students. A dean who adds self-study duties without removing others invites the turnover that the evidence links to weaker programs. Wexcombe's dean counts accreditation work toward service, grants course releases for leads and spreads the work across the whole faculty through standard teams. McRae et al. (2026) describe how structuring accreditation around mentor pairs and shared teams turned it into faculty development and succession planning, and the same structure lets a dean ask more of the faculty without asking it of the same few people each time.

Honest Reporting

The hardest test is honesty. Outcome data can be presented in ways that flatter a program. CCNE, one of the national nursing accreditors, lets a program calculate completion rates excluding students who left for identified reasons such as family obligations, relocation, financial barriers or a change of major (Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, 2024). The allowance is reasonable, since those departures may say little about program quality, but it creates a temptation to classify doubtful departures generously. Wexcombe's dean set a rule: exclusions require documentation from the student's own exit record, the rate is always reported both with and without exclusions, and institutional research, not the nursing school, classifies each case.

When the Numbers Are Bad

Leaders are tested most when results disappoint. When the baccalaureate program's first-time pass rate fell to 81% in one year, close to the 80% expectation, the dean did not wait for a board inquiry. The faculty analyzed the results by course and by student group, found that students who had repeated two or more courses performed worst, and changed the progression policy and the support offered after a first course failure. The analysis and the change were recorded in minutes and reported in the next annual report. Evaluators later cited the episode as evidence that the evaluation plan worked.

Making the Case Upward

The dean's audience includes the president and the board, who see accreditation mainly as a cost and a reputational risk. The dean presents it instead as protection of enrollment and tuition, since the programs' value to students depends on it, and as a source of discipline that improves outcomes. Each request in the table is tied to a standard and to evidence, and each report to the board includes outcome data with the accreditation status, so that trustees learn to read the program through its results.

Advocacy for the Profession

Accreditation also gives a dean standing to advocate beyond the college. Deans who review other programs as evaluators, respond to proposed revisions of the standards and publish their programs' data help shape what the profession expects of itself. Wexcombe's dean has encouraged two faculty members to train as peer evaluators, both to strengthen the school's understanding and to contribute to the wider system.

The Dean's Own Accountability

Finally, accreditation tests a leader's willingness to be judged. The dean will be interviewed by evaluators, will sign the self-study and will answer for its accuracy. The dean has asked the faculty for anonymous feedback on leadership each year and reports the themes back, a small practice that models the evaluation culture the standards ask of the program.

Conclusion

Accreditation tests a dean's leadership in three ways: whether the dean secures the resources a quality program needs, whether the dean protects the faculty who do the work, and whether the dean reports the program's results honestly when they are unflattering. Evidence connects leadership stability and faculty strength to program outcomes, and the standards make those connections visible every year. A dean who treats accreditation as ongoing leadership rather than a periodic event builds a program that would meet the standards whether or not anyone came to check.

References

Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. (2024). Standards for accreditation of baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs. American Association of Colleges of Nursing. https://www.aacnnursing.org/Portals/0/PDFs/CCNE/CCNE-Education-Standards-2024.pdf

McRae, M., Hart, L., & Wolf, L. (2026). Accreditation as opportunity: Preparing future nursing leaders through faculty collaboration and succession planning. Journal of Professional Nursing, 65, 137-141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2026.04.007

Spector, N., Silvestre, J., Alexander, M., Martin, B., Hooper, J. I., Squires, A., & Ojemeni, M. (2020). NCSBN regulatory guidelines and evidence-based quality indicators for nursing education programs. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 11(2), S1-S64. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2155-8256(20)30075-2