Yavapai College has until February to provide its regional accreditation agency, the Higher Learning Commission, evidence and documentation on why its accreditation should be maintained.
If the HLC were to revoke its accreditation, students would be unable to transfer class credit or receive federal assistance to pay for tuition, Yavapai College Director of Academic Initiative Megan Crossfield said during a meeting on Aug. 11.
Board member Deb McCasland [District 2] filed a complaint to the HLC on April 15 alleging board members were acting out of line and possibly threatening accreditation. After McCasland’s complaint was filed, the college was placed on what the HLC calls “embedded monitoring.”
The deadline aligns with a midpoint review in the college’s 10-year accreditation cycle.
Crossfield said the college is entering year four of the cycle, after being approved for continued accreditation in 2023. Year four always includes an “assurance review.”
It’s “essentially a mid-cycle check-in,” she said. “We are required to submit a large assurance review document, so that is a narrative that talks about how we are addressing our four criteria for accreditation.”
The four criteria, which werereduced from five criteria in 2025, include the college’s mission, integrity of ethical and responsible conduct, teaching and learning for student success and sustainability of institutional effectiveness.
The monitoring isn’t intended to say the accreditation situation is dire, Crossfield said, but to recognize there’s a possibility something needs to be worked on.
“In general, about 20% to 30% of institutions during a comprehensive or a mid-cycle assurance review will have some kind of embedded monitoring, so it happens,” she said.
Monitoring is done by representatives from other colleges as a peer review to gather more informationon the area being monitored.
“Right now, we’re on embedded monitoring for criterion 2a, which is integrity, and 2c which is board governance,” Crossfield said. “The reason we’re being put on embedded monitoring is because information was provided and HLC is saying ‘you know what? Maybe something is going on, … but we’d like you to provide more information.’”
If there was immediate concern that could threaten the accreditation, Crossfield said an HLC team would come in person to do an extensive review as soon as it could.
HLC Complaint
McCasland and Janet Nix, Ph.D., the college’s chief Human Resources officer, filed the complaint jointly, accusing fellow board members, particularly Representative Bill Kiel [District 1] of “inappropriate behavior.”
“The board needs to work on that, keeping in our role as board members,” McCasland said. “The fiduciary responsibility that we have is not what you guys have been doing. It’s keeping the college running, it’s not about talking about people in the press, it’s not talking negatively about the president in the press. That’s how we carry the college forward. I’ve seen all kinds of problems and that’s why I submitted the complaint.”
She also said she saw board roles being violated at every meeting of this year’s board. Kiel, Representative Toby Payne [District 3] and the recently resigned Patrick Kuykendall [District 4] were sworn in January 2025.
After the complaint was filed, the college was required to respond within 30 days.
Acting President Doug Berry, Ph.D., said it wasn’t intended to corroborate the complaint or dismiss it.
“It wasn’t about defending the college or protecting the accreditation, it was more answering the HLC and the IAC [Intersocietal Accreditation Commission] ‘are these things happening at the institution,’” he said.
Accreditation Cycle
Assuming the assurance review in February doesn’t threaten Yavapai College’s accreditation, the main steps remaining in the cycle is year five’s quality initiative, the next assurance review in year eight and the affirmation site visit in year 10.
“The quality initiative is a project that HLC requires us to do and it can focus on process improvement or it can focus on student success,” Crossfield said. “We get to choose what we do.”
It doesn’t have to be successful, but there has to be effort to improve. The decision on what to take on as a quality initiative willbe decided closer to the beginning of year five.
Last year, a peer reviewer visited three high schools and the Verde Valley campus.
“It was a very positive visit, the peer reviewer was very impressed with what we offer,” Crossfield said. “This was the first time we had high schools visited. Per HLC, any location where … a student can earn 50% or more of a degree or certificate is considered an additional location.”
Forensic Audit
In addition to the HLC complaint, McCasland requested public discussion about a forensic audit that had been done after Vice President of Community Relations and Legislative Affairs Jack Smith began his role in February.
“[He] noticed various funds coming from different pots of money and it just seemed unusual,” Berry said. “He was approved by the president at the time, Dr. [Lisa] Rhine, to go ahead and work with this firm to dive into our financials.”
Smith took over from Rodney Jenkins, who had started in his VP role in 2017.
“We started this back in May of 2026 with an approved budget of about $50,000 to look into a particular VP’s area for the past three to five years seeking to find criminal activity,” Berry said. “Let me say, there has been no criminal activity found at this time and nor do we anticipate any criminal activity will be brought forth in the final report.”
The Chicago-based Baker Tilly firm is set to release the report by Friday, Aug. 21.
From preliminary reports and conversations with the firm, Berry said no criminal activities were identified.
The audit helped inform the college of “some policies that we maybe have in place that we weren’t following all the way,” Berry said, “and some different practices where we’re giving a little too much authority to certain levels and we want to make sure that everyone, regardless of title and level at the institution is following our policies and practices.”
