The Accreditation Review Commission placed the Marquette University Physician Assistant program under accreditation probation Sept. 2023. The program will be reviewed again in the fall of 2025.
The class of 2024-25 still graduated from an accredited institution, but the graduating class of 2026-2027 won’t graduate from an accredited institution unless they pass the review next fall.
If the program doesn’t get off of probation and loses its accreditation next fall, then these students won’t be able to sit for the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination.
They were put under probation for two reasons. One, because they didn’t have enough clinical rotations in women’s health, pediatrics and behavioral health fields. Second, the commission wanted a more in-depth analysis of their curriculum, outcomes and administrative process.
A few weeks ago, the program received feedback from the ARC for the first set of reports they compiled to show their progress since last fall.
“They accepted our report,” Mary Jo Wiemiller, chair of the PA program, said. “So, what that means is all of the things we’ve put in place and changes so far are viewed favorably by the accrediting agency.”
What have they done to improve in these areas:
Wiemiller said they’ve put 100% of their students in a women’s health rotation and increased their clinical sites by 30%. They’ve also been working with a consulting firm to create their reports and prepare for their assessment.
Additionally, the program is sending a group of students to North Carolina this year to work with underserved populations as a new site for rotations.
To address the issue of a lack of analysis, they hired a director of assessment this June that works in the Marquette PA department.
“She has been fantastic,” Wiemiller said. “She’s really helping us with all of our data assessment and being able to do that deeper dive into our learning outcomes and show how our students are meeting their learning outcomes on these various rotations.”
Wiemiller said there hasn’t been a dip in application numbers since last fall when they weren’t accredited.
“We fully intend to come off of our probation,” Wiemiller said. “We’re about halfway through right now, and we’ve received really positive feedback from both our consultant and from the accrediting agency.”
This story was written by Sophia Tiedge. She can be reached at [email protected].
Updated 11/12: This article was updated to clarify information that could have been interpreted unclearly. The previous headline stated that the school was trying to “gain accreditation,” however, the PA program is accredited. They are currently seeking removal of their accreditation probation which has since been updated in the headline. The third paragraph has also been updated to clarify that same fact.
