Bittner School of Business Accreditation

St. John Fisher College School of Business Receives Coveted Accreditation

On April 24, 2003, St. John Fisher College received a Certificate of Accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

The AACSB, based in Tampa, is a professional association for college and university management education and the "premier" accrediting agency for bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs in business administration and accounting.

AACSB accreditation represents a rigorous peer review of a school's practices against globally set standards, and plays an important role in recruiting faculty and students.

St. John Fisher College first applied for AACSB accreditation in 1993. The Business School faculty drew up a strategic plan, approved by the AACSB Maintenance of Accreditation Committee, in which they detailed specific objectives and how they planned to achieve them. After meeting all of its objectives, Fisher submitted a self-evaluation report which was ultimately ratified by the AACSB Board. The process took close to ten years.

The St. John Fisher College School of Business was created in October 2002 by an act of the Board of Trustees thereby bringing the accounting/finance and management/marketing departments under a unified structure. It is the first autonomous body within the College and its creation was a condition of the accreditation process.