On January 31, 2020, the NAAB Board of Directors approved the 2020 Conditions for Accreditation and Procedures for Accreditation. As we continue to implement the new criteria, NAAB is committed to making improvements to the accreditation experience by streamlining our process and further aligning accreditation policies and procedures with national accreditation norms and practices.
To support accredited programs; programs pursuing NAAB accreditation, and our visiting teams, NAAB engages in a robust process of continuous improvement. We seek feedback from teams and programs after each assessment cycle, we listen to questions and issues raised at our monthly Office Hours sessions, and we engage in dialogue with programs and stakeholders in multiple ways throughout the year. NAAB also reviews policies, practices, and procedures utilized by accrediting organizations from related and similar professional fields to identify areas where improvements might be made to better serve our programs, our changing environment, and the needs of the architecture profession.
As part of this process, and in response to otherwise compliant programs that are structurally unable to meet the requirement, we are currently proposing to remove language in Condition 4.2 Professional Degrees and Curriculum that “NAAB-accredited professional degree programs have the exclusive right to use the B.Arch., M.Arch., and/or D.Arch. titles, which are recognized by the public as accredited degrees and therefore may not be used by non-accredited programs.”
We remain committed to ensuring that the public understands the difference between NAAB-accredited degrees and non-accredited degrees. To that end, we propose strengthening Condition 6, which requires programs to publish specific information about NAAB-accredited programs, to also include the use of the NAAB digital badge, which highlights the program’s accreditation status.
As always, when we propose changes to the Conditions or Procedures, we seek public comment on the changes prior to their approval. We ask that you add your feedback on this change to this survey. The survey will remain open from May 1, 2023, until June 1, 2023.