Summary of the case

Written by the auditors, the summary of the case explicates the case the program has made in its Inquiry Brief to support its claims--it tells the program’s story. The purpose of the summary is threefold: (1) to convey to the authors (and to others) the auditors’ interest in fully understanding the Brief’s meanings and contexts; (2) to facilitate the construction of the final audit strategy; and (3) to provide the members of the Accreditation Panel and Accreditation Committee with an accurate summary of the case the Brief makes.

Following these five guidelines, the auditors prepare the summary of the case:

1. In their own words, the auditors restate all the claims advanced in the Brief related to TEAC’s Quality Principle I, the evidence related to the reliability and validity of the measures used to assess the claims (Quality Principle II), and the standards of capacity for program quality.

2. The auditors summarize the results, linking particular findings to claims, including any summative judgments the faculty members make about their claims.

3. In a separate section of the summary, the auditors write out the principal results of the program’s internal audit and the findings reported in Appendix B.

4. The auditors quote from the Brief itself in composing the narrative and cite page numbers of the quote.

5. Finally, because the auditors are telling the program’s story, they do not comment about aspects of the case for accreditation that they may think are weak or problematic. Nor do they make the case stronger than the program faculty made it. The summary is about the program’s case, not the case the auditors would have made.

The lead auditor prepares the initial draft of the summary of the case; other members of the team review it, and once the team accepts the summary, TEAC sends it to the program head.