Sick days at Metropolitan Community College continue as its practical-nursing program is stripped of its accreditation

Last month, The Pitch examined the mounting problems at Metropolitan Community College (“Fizz Ed,” April 29). Those problems include a decline in the number of applicants; a mass exodus of faculty, staff and high-ranking administrators; a plunge in morale among those still employed in the district; and the erosion of the long-held system of shared governance among faculty and leadership.

Two figures loom large over the turbulence: Mark James, a career law-enforcement professional who had only one year of higher-education experience before being appointed MCC’s chancellor in 2010, and his chief of staff, Kathy Walter-Mack, a former lawyer and desegregation official for the Kansas City, Missouri, school district. Among the roughly two dozen former and current MCC employees The Pitch spoke with before and after the article’s publication, consensus exists that Walter-Mack — who also lacked higher-education experience prior to being installed as James’ second-in-command — essentially runs the entire five-campus district on a day-to-day basis, while James focuses on fundraising and community visibility. Walter-Mack is also the district’s lawyer and its human-resources director, which many have characterized as a conflict of interest.

As the story was going to press, reports surfaced that James was a finalist for the position of president at Park University. Park confirmed this, but a representative from the school said last week that “no decisions have yet been made regarding the presidential search.”

The Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing — the national organization that accredits nursing programs — recently made a decision, though. It has denied the accreditation of MCC’s practical-nursing program. Taught on the Penn Valley campus, the program gained accreditation in 1979. After a 2012 ACEN review found that MCC was not in compliance with several of its standards, ACEN placed MCC on “warning” status. Schools given that probation have two years to steer their way back into compliance.

MCC evidently did not change course.

The summary of the commission’s action denying accreditation for the practical-nursing program cites 11 examples of the school’s noncompliance. Among them, according to the summary:

• A lack of evidence that the curriculum incorporates established professional standards, guidelines and competencies.

• A lack of evidence that the program length is consistent with national guidelines and best practices.

• A lack of evidence that the systematic plan for evaluation includes specific, measurable expected levels of achievement and a minimum of three (3) years of data for each component within the plan.

• A lack of evidence that graduate satisfaction, employer satisfaction and job-placement rates have been assessed in an ongoing manner and sufficient data have been collected.

• The program’s three-year mean for the licensure examination pass rate was not at or above the national mean for the same three-year period.

MCC–Penn Valley was one of only two schools out of 70 that was denied accreditation during ACEN’s fall 2014 review cycle. The other, the University of the District of Columbia, is appealing ACEN’s decision; MCC is not. Visitors to the practical-nursing program’s page on MCC’s website are advised that it is “Under construction.” The site adds: “Please see an advisor.”

Lester Hardegree was hired in 2012 as the first dean of health sciences and the executive director of the Health Science Institute on the Penn Valley campus. In that position, Hardegree tells The Pitch, he was supposed to have direct oversight over the practical-nursing program’s director, Evelyn Claiborne. But he says Claiborne regularly circumvented him and took all questions and issues related to the program to Walter-Mack.

“My forte — the reason they brought me to MCC — is that I have a skill for identifying strengths and weaknesses in health-education programs, and for turning those programs around,” Hardegree says. “Not long after I got there, it became very clear that nothing was going to change at the school given the leadership there. That’s my personal feeling. I think all the problems stem from the leadership of Mark James and Kathy Walter-Mack. It starts at the top.”

Hardegree resigned last June. Claiborne declined to comment, directing The Pitch‘s queries to MCC’s media spokeswoman, Christina Medina.

“The practical-nursing program is an accredited program,” Medina says. “The Missouri State Board is the only required accrediting body for this particular program. ACEN is a newer accrediting body that goes beyond what is required by the state.”

The program is accredited by the Missouri State Board, but only conditionally. The board’s bylaws define a conditionally approved program as one that has “failed to meet or maintain the regulations or requirements, or both, set by the board.”

Medina did not respond to a question about what these stripped and conditional accreditations would mean for the would-be nurses who shelled out $12,495 for the program.

Meanwhile, there’s little indication that James, Walter-Mack or the MCC Board of Trustees is taking any of this very seriously. At a board meeting on Tuesday, May 12, Robert Martin, a long-serving board member, read aloud a resolution in support of James’ leadership at MCC. The board unanimously approved it.