Ricks College received notice this week that it is now a candidate for full-scale accreditation of its proposed bachelor’s degree programs as it makes the transition to become BYU-Idaho, according to a news release.
Candidacy status was granted to Ricks College by the Commission on Colleges and Universities of the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges, according to a news release.
Candidacy means the school is eligible for accreditation, which won’t be official until the first graduating class has gone through. Ricks is already accredited for it’s two-year program.
The college will continue to be officially known as Ricks College until the beginning of the Fall Semester when the first upper-division classes are offered, according to a news release. Students receiving degrees at both April and June commencements will graduate from Ricks College.
Ricks has been working on the accreditation process since June 21, the day BYU-Idaho was announced.
BYU-Idaho is expected to experience a slight increase in the size of the student body during the next few years. It will maintain its present level of approximately 8,600 freshman and sophomore students and its student-faculty ratio of 25 to 1, according to a news release.
The projected number of students on campus is roughly estimated at 9,200 for 2001-02 to 11,600 for 2005-06, according to a news release.
Of the proposed 100 new faculty members, they estimate that approximately 25 new faculty members will be needed for the 2001-02 school year, 20 for the 2002-03 year, five for the 2003-04 year, 25 for the 2004-05 year, and 25 for the 2005-06 year, according to a news release.
