Over a two-year period, a university-wide committee worked on a comprehensive self-study of Johns Hopkins in preparation for its decennial reaccreditation evaluation.

The final report offers a sweeping analysis of the university’s progress and accomplishments over the last decade. It tells the story of one integrated university marshaling its distributed strengths to advance a common mission of discovery, research, and service. The assessment was the culmination of self-examinations from each division, cross-divisional considerations of four key areas—faculty, educational offerings, student learning assessment, and student services—and focused analyses of our Gateway Sciences Initiative and the future of PhD education at this university.

This was an outward-facing moment to be certain—the report was submitted to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education for its review. But it was also an opportunity to look inward, to take stock of our progress along key measures and identify for ourselves recommendations for improvement. A Self-Study Steering Committee comprising faculty, staff, and students with broad institutional knowledge and perspectives offered leadership and oversight of the self-study process. All said, more than 100 members of our community supported the reaccreditation efforts. Recommendations in the final report ranged from expanding the ways we assess our students’ learning to strengthening the ways data-driven decisions are guiding and disciplining the evolution of this institution.

It was also an opportunity to look inward, to take stock of our progress along key measures and identify for ourselves recommendations for improvement.

In November 2014, the commission officially reaffirmed Johns Hopkins University’s accreditation, commending the university on its self-study process and report. Notably, the commission’s action came with no conditions or recommendations for follow-up—a rare unqualified endorsement.