AAC
Recommended for Business Accreditation
ECBE’s
Site Visit Team Praises College’s
Program
By Gorjan Lazarov - Staff
writer
A visiting panel from the European Council for Business Education has
recommended that Anglo-American College’s bachelor’s degree in business
administration be given full accreditation, it was learned last week. The final
decision will be made by the ECBE
Board of Commissioners when it meets in Prague on Dec. 2.
AAC’s president, Dr. Richard Smith, expressed pleasure with the
recommendation of the panel. “ECBE is a very important validation of our
program,” Smith said. “It is a major step forward and will give us a
competitive advantage.”
Harry Nicholls, chairman of the panel and Robert
Rietbroek visited the college last month, meeting with faculty, staff and
students. Their report said the visitors were “very impressed with the staff
that they met, with their sense of mission and professional competence”. The
panel was particularly impressed with the quality of the documentation provided,
particularly the self-evaluation document, “which they considered to be one of
the best that they had seen,” the report said.
The chairman of the School of Business Administration also
expressed pleasure with the recommendations of the panel. “It’s always
exciting when you work hard for something and it finally happens,”
David Whitney said.
He emphasized that the ECBE accreditation process
predated his arrival on campus. “Much credit is due to the entire AAC team who
were involved from the early stages,” Whitney said. “My good fortune was to
contribute during the final few months and be able to celebrate with everyone
else.”
He said many AAC personnel, led by Academic
Director Mitchell Young, were crucial to the business accreditation effort.
Whitney thinks that the ECBE accreditation means a lot to the
college.
“Any accreditation is like
a recommendation,” he said, “It means that a recognized international
organization is making a legal statement that the Business Administration
program at AAC is of good quality, meets strict standards, and deserves to be
recognized for excellence.”
AAC is the only English language undergraduate business program in
the Czech Republic to be business-accredited. Whitney considers this to be an
important selling point. “I am proud of this distinction, which clearly
differentiates us from our competitors in terms of quality,” he told Lennon
Wall Online.
The School of Business Administration is pursing a variety of
academic projects. Whitney would like to develop an active internship program
and pursue international academic partners, especially for graduate study.
Improvements in the curriculum are also on his agenda.
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