By Kim Manahan (Whetstone Staff Writer)

Wesley College student Megan Stoffa will continue as an education major – but not at Wesley.

“I will be attending Wilmington University this January,” the sophomore said. “They are fully accredited with NCATE and Middle States.”

Wesley is fully accredited by the Middle States Association, but at the beginning of November, the college’s education department lost accreditation with the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) after being on probation for three years.

Freshman Kendra Mathewson also plans on transferring to Wilmington for the same reasons.

“Losing the national accreditation affects the program greatly,” Mathewson said. “We still have the common accreditation, but so does every other school.”

Now, Wesley isn’t set apart from other colleges, she said.

NCATE makes the program more appealing, said senior education major Christina White.

“There are many fine institutions that do not have NCATE, but have teacher education,” said Dr. William Johnston, president of the college. “Wesley wants to regain accreditation because it is an additional seal of approval for our education program.”

White said she has heard several freshmen speaking about transferring.

“I came to Wesley specifically for their education program, and I’m mad that they lost the national accreditation,” Mathewson said.

Wesley College as a whole is still accredited.

“It’s really Middle States that legitimizes all of our programs,” said Dr. Patricia Dwyer, vice president of academic affairs. “We believe our program is a good program and a lot of good teacher education programs don’t have NCATE accreditation.”

Delaware State University, Wilmington University and the University of Delaware’s education programs are all NCATE accredited.

When Stoffa decided to major in education, she did not know that the department was on probation with NCATE.

“It is public knowledge,” Dwyer said. “It is on NCATE’s website that we have been on probation since 2007.”

But many students did not know this.

“I knew that something was not right, but I didn’t know they were on probation,” White said. “They had told us last April that there were a few standards we didn’t meet, but they didn’t say we were on probation.”

Students were notified of the situation by a letter sent from Dwyer’s office on Nov. 10.

“I heard that Wesley has known about this issue since 2007,” Mathewson said. “They should have made this issue aware to incoming freshmen who were aspiring to be an education major.”

Stoffa said teachers gave different reasons in class to why the department lost NCATE accreditation.

“The professors seem to be bullshitting the students,” she said. “They told us we only lost it by a few points; that it had to do with us not having the physical education major included, which has been recently fixed.”

Students were told that everything was fine and would be fixed immediately, she said.

“Right now, Dr. Dwyer and the education department are studying the best time to reapply,” Johnston said.

Wesley will reapply for reaccreditation within the next year, Dwyer said.

“The earliest we can apply and have a visit is spring 2011,” she said.

There will be a thorough review with the education department to figure out if this will happen in the spring or fall, Dwyer said.

Freshman Devan Bartell recently changed her major to business administration, but not because of the NCATE situation.

“I have always loved business,” she said. “When I heard that the education department had all of these accreditation issues, it felt right – but I didn’t change it because of that.”

Bartell believes that the education department has a good program.

“I really don’t see where they need improvement,” she said. “Not many programs let you go out in the field as a first semester freshman – I think that’s the best.”

Stoffa sees things differently.

“The classes need to have more knowledge and material for students to learn compared to the way that they are now,” she said. “They are full of opinioned activities and papers that are built on no knowledge or material.”

The graduate program in education is also affected, Dwyer said. “It’s all [education] programs.”

Some students felt like the school was avoiding their questions.

“I asked multiple professors about the issue,” Mathewson said. “Everyone had a different answer.”

The school said that there was nothing to worry about, because we were only off by a few points, she said. “If we were only off by a few points, then why has this issue not been corrected yet?”

Dwyer said that it was not done by a point scale.

“They might be talking about the standards,” she said. “There is no scoring system.”

Wesley failed to meet two of the six standards, assessment and unit governance.

Education majors will still be accredited by the state of Delaware.

The requirements are that they pass the Praxis I and II, maintain a 3.00 GPA, and graduate from an accredited college, which Wesley is through Middle States, Dwyer said. For physical education majors, their GPA needs to be 2.75.

The education department remains accredited with NMSA, ACEI, and NASPE.

Graduating seniors like White will not be affected.

“We were grandfathered into the program,” she said. “We’ll still get our accreditation when they are accredited again.”

At first there was confusion, she said.

“Now we’re fine,” White said. “Because we’ll graduate fine.”