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.