FACULTY INFORMATION

Delaware Study

2022 Report to AAA (PDF)
This document was submitted to the Adventist Accrediting Association (AAA) prior to its accreditation visit on our campus, October 18-20, 2022. Because Southern Adventist University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), AAA makes provision for a more focused self-study utilizing the abbreviated “Form B” standards and criteria. Because AAA allows for this abbreviated self-study for regionally accredited colleges and universities, the AAA accreditation visit complements the recent SACS visit by focusing primarily on those elements that make Southern a uniquely Seventh-day Adventist institution. The document is in PDF file format (PDF file requires Adobe PDF Reader).

Employment Handbook and Policies and Procedures Manual (PDF) can be found on the Human Resources website: http://www.southern.edu/administration/hr/foremployees/index.html  

Adjunct Faculty Handbook (pdf)

This handbook is provided to help adjunct faculty members understand university and school/department expectations. 

Interview and Employment Standards and Guidelines for Deans and Chairs

National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) is the way Southern Adventist University evaluates educational effectiveness, in part, by utilizing an external inventory. Follow the link to their website to find out the kinds of things that NSSE measures.  NSSE 2007 survey information is available. 

Educational Testing Service’s MAPP is a test to assess the quality of instruction and student learning in general education. This test measures student achievement in critical thinking, reading, writing, and mathematics.

Committee Membership lists Southern Adventist University's committee membership for past and current school years.

Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is the governmental website that provides information regarding students' rights.

FERPA policy at Southern Adventist University has applied the legal guidelines in much the same way for decades and is published by the Office of Records & Advisement.

Student Information Access Matrix is a PDF that identifies which student information Southern Adventist University automatically makes available to which parties.

Academic honesty is one of the important values that enable us to function as a university. The spirit of honest inquiry requires that students and faculty members properly cite the sources used in studies and writing. It is important for us to be able to trust each other as we learn from each other's presentations, written work, and visual communication in order to keep the teaching/learning enterprise functioning well.

Academic honesty is even more critical at a university that offers a Christian education. Respect for other individuals' work means that we will give them proper credit for their thoughts and expressions whenever used as a resource for our own projects and communications.

Catalog and course syllabi should be studied by each student to ensure they understand the meaning and application of academic honesty. 

Turnitin is a company Southern Adventist University contracts with that provides resources for students and a service for professors who may need to verify the academic integrity with which papers or projects have been prepared and submitted.

In the fall 2008 term, Student Association leadership surveyed Southern Adventist students and faculty on matters related to academic integrity using an integrity survey developed by Don McCabe of Rutgers University and initially released from the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University. The Center has since moved to Clemson University. These data and results of national administrations of the survey are found in the files below:

1. Southern Adventist Student Data (Undergraduate)
2. Southern Adventist Student Comments (Undergraduate)
3. Southern Adventist Faculty Data
4. Southern Adventist Faculty Comments
5. National Survey Data (Undergraduate)
6. National Survey Faculty Data

These data were presented, in part, to faculty at the March 30, 2009 faculty meeting by Doug Baasch, Student Association President, and Dr. Robert Young.

The surveys objectively assess student and faculty attitudes regarding the importance of and practices related to academic integrity at Southern Adventist. The national nature of the survey provides an opportunity to compare attitudes and practices at Southern Adventist with those at other participating colleges and universities. And finally, these results lay the foundation for more focused attention on matters of academic integrity and thereby provide the means to engage faculty members and students in committing to integrity as a “fundamental value of teaching, learning, and scholarship (http://www.academicintegrity.org/).”