Manchester University President Dave McFadden sent the following email to colleagues the evening of Tuesday, May 9.
Subject line: Sharing disappointing news
Dear Colleagues,
Manchester was notified Tuesday that the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education (CAPTE) has denied Candidate for Accreditation status to Manchester’s Doctor of Physical Therapy program.
The program will continue to be listed as a developing program until the program is granted candidacy or the action to deny candidacy is final.
Bottom line: We can and will ask for reconsideration. If we are denied again, we can appeal, but this effectively means that we won’t be able to launch our first class this year.
By way of context, the process up to this point included four steps: (1) we submitted our Application for Candidacy in early December, (2) the CAPTE team visited in January and submitted their report shortly after, (3) we reviewed and responded to the team’s report in February, and (4) CAPTE staff reviewed the entire package. All these materials were then reviewed by the CAPTE board in April, leading to this decision.
CAPTE allows us to request an expeditated reconsideration of the decision, which we will do tomorrow. This process will take time, however, and will not be completed in time to enroll the 30 students we had ready to start in two weeks.
In addition to our follow up with CAPTE – requesting reconsideration and providing supporting information and documentation – we will do right by the students who were expecting to begin classes in two weeks.
We emailed all the students today and we will hold a Zoom meeting with them this evening to share the news.
Although this is disappointing news, we have the resources and capacity to address the program issues raised by CAPTE and move forward institutionally.
Dave McFadden
President
Manchester University
260-982-5050