— 2018

Accreditations: Audencia has made a name for itself within the system

The long-standing representation and involvement of Isabelle Fagnot in a large number of steering committees for associations and other accreditation organisations over the last two years has helped increase Audencia’s visibility within these same organisations and make the school an active contributor within the system. “It’s not just a question of accreditations. My involvement in co-coordinating working groups (e.g. the quality working groups for the Conference of Grande École (CGE) and the AACSB Europe Affinity Group) as well as in co-developing seminars (e.g. the AACSB Quality Assurance Professional Workshop and the EFMD Smart Data Management Workshop) has led to Audencia being the focus of conversations, debates and the interest of other schools and accreditation organisations. For example, the AACSB just launched the Business Accreditation Taskforce, a committee tasked with re-imagining accreditation standards. When consulted during the last quality working group for the Conference of Grande École higher institutions (CGE), we became active contributors to the development of those standards.”

— 2018

A sustainable culture around quality

“The department’s main goal is to ensure that, by December 2020, audits are going smoothly, process revisions have been implemented and we will be entering a period of strategic thinking to decide on what the next steps will be and how to keep moving forward with the culture around quality.”

For the past two years, Isabelle Fagnot has been busy educating the in-house teams on the expectations of accreditation organisations and the accreditation process which is constantly evolving. Admittedly, preparing the applications requires a colossal amount of work, particularly in terms of data collection and drafting. This work can be simplified by implementing tools such as the ACADEM platform. This platform is used to manage faculty, research and accreditations in collaboration with the academic affairs department. “The idea is to continue to develop our processes and improve our culture around quality,” explains Isabelle Fagnot. “Accreditation should be viewed as a tool for continuous improvement to better support our growth.”