IRQAOA Department

The Institutional Research, Quality Assurance, Outreach & Accreditation (IRQAOA) department ensures achieving quality and standards as envisaged in the SUC’s Vision and Mission. It also strives to provide quality services in academic and academic support services in SUC and evaluate best practices of National and international academic institutions. This department works towards meeting the guidelines/standards/accreditation requirements provided by MOE and International accreditation agencies. The roles of the IRQAOA department are detailed in the following sections.

Institutional Effectiveness and Quality Assurance

• The Institutional Effectiveness and Quality Assurance section monitors all processes in the University and implements QA policies in line with the University’s strategic plan, the Policies and Procedures manual, the QA manual, and the MOE standards, classification framework and risk assessment parameters. The section is supported by faculty and administrative staff in executing its duties.
• It coordinates between schools and departments to implement and follow up the university Strategic plan and to enhance a sustained planning process to ensure consistency among university units at large. It provides support in the development of the department's operational plan. It manages evaluation activities and processes based on semester/annual planning and closing reports, IE reports, and Strategic and Annual Operational Plan achievement reports.
• It is responsible for performing Quality Audits in coordination with the Quality Assurance Committee to measure the level of compliance with the policies and procedures and provide remedial actions.
• It maintains a register with the log of new and updated SUC policies, to include policy identification parameters, policy owner, national and international standards if any applicable and date of recent modification.  It also oversees the policy management system of SUC by maintaining a record of approved policy changes and ensures dissemination to concerned units for implementation.
• It reviews and maintains the Risk Register and prepares a consolidated analysis of risk incidents and submits the Risk Management report to the VC for review. It monitors and evaluates the impact of risk post implementation of risk mitigating measures to assess their effectiveness in reducing the risk impact.

Academic Accreditation

• It ensures the preparation, auditing and evaluation of course files are timely performed and maintains a Repository of course files for reference by concerned authorities.
• It maintains compliance with concerned policies pertaining PLOs and CLOs measurement, achievement status, and mapping with the applicable QF Emirates level descriptor and sub-strands.
• It follows the University submissions at the CAA and international accreditation bodies, and ensures implementing the recommendations made by the program mentors, consultants, and external evaluators.
• It reviews the accreditation reports and related supporting material submitted by the schools as well as other units and ensures approval of these documents before submission to the relevant authorities including international accreditation bodies and ranking agencies.
• It manages and follows up institutional licensure and academic programs reviews thereby ensuring that the evaluation processes are comprehensive and entails a complete cycle of regular evaluation. Improvements are performed in line with SUC’s policies, national and international standards.
• The Academic Quality Assurance Section, in coordination with the Quality Assurance as well as the Academic Planning and Operations Committees manages and reviews the accreditation of academic programs along with the learning outcomes assessment.

Institutional Research

• The Institutional Research Section avail data assembly, performs statistical analysis services and generates all quantitative and qualitative evaluation reports related the university’s academic, administrative and service departments in support of institutional effectiveness.
• It provides accurate institutional data and analyses about the University and disseminates information through periodic and improvised reports to both internal and external stakeholders in a timely manner in support of effective planning, assessment, and data-informed decision-making.
• It develops and deploys surveys, in line with MOE stipulations and international standards, directed towards internal and external stakeholders, and generates summary reports based on appropriate interpretation of analysis results.
• It develops informative worksheets to evaluate faculty and staff performance and liaise with concerned departments to ensure online deployment.
• It collaborates with other units at the university on strategic, operational, and budgetary planning, as well as program reviews MOE classification framework and accreditation.
• It provides oversight and training for compliance reporting and standardization of data to ensure consistency, uniformity and integrity.
• It identifies qualitative and quantitative benchmarking parameters and provides data and analytical support in benchmarking SUC's performance with other Universities at national and international level.
• It reviews the international ranking agencies' requirements and facilitates the process for obtaining ranking and rating from the international agencies.
• It provides support in the development of the department operational plan.

1. To develop and maintain quality standards in the institution.
2. To evaluate the IE and identify gaps.
3. To function as a custodian for the collection, compilation, and analysis of information.
4. To provide support in obtaining International accreditations, ratings, and rankings.
5. To conduct regular Institutional benchmarking.
6. To coordinate and ensure timely registration of risk incidents by all units.

Institutional research

• Planning and decision support

The institutional Research unit identifies the data requirements, and plans and develops assessment tools helpful in gathering appropriate information for increasing institutional effectiveness. IRO compiles, analyzes, and disseminates information for decision-making in the process of institutional effectiveness. It provides inputs for preparing and evaluating Strategic Plans, annual and semester plans.

• Feedback survey

Conducting various surveys that helps in assessing the status and requirements of SUC among the stakeholders is a major responsibility of the Institutional Research Unit. Student, staff, graduate and employer perceptions and opinions are imperative in determining the future directions of SUC. Therefore, IRO reviews, develops, plans and implements appropriate survey tools and analyzes and disseminates the results for appropriate action.

• National and international accreditation

IRQAOA is responsible for the process of national and international accreditation process by coordinating and collecting necessary institutional data & documents required for local as well as international accreditation.

• Facilitating the performance evaluation system

The IRQAOA helps in developing the tools for performance evaluation systems of evaluating Board of Trustees, Academic Affairs Council, Faculty and Staff. It collects and analyzes information on various stake holders and evaluates their performance through a predefined evaluation systems and forwards the evaluation results to decision makers.

Quality assurance

• Quality enhancement

SUC is committed to excellence in all aspects of academics and academic support service departments as envisioned in the vision statement. The Quality Assurance unit ensures there is continuous enhancement of the institutional goals in meeting the specified standards and requirements across all areas of Academics and Academic Support Services.

• Developing institutional policies

IRQAOA department is responsible for preparing, amending, ensuring compliance and evaluating the policy and procedures of SUC.

• Quality auditing

The IRQAOA Department coordinates with Quality Assurance Committee for conducting audit of Academic and Academic Support Services. The audit of Academics includes audit of curriculum and course syllabus at the start of every academic year and review of course files, course reports, update of course syllabus in system, implementation of course syllabus, Quality check of question papers, etc. every semester. The Quality Assurance Committee nominates a team of subject experts in coordination with DIRQAOA and VC who shall be responsible for the audit of course files. The audit of academic support services includes audit of start of AY preparations, commencement of semester preparations, semester closing audits, audit of uploads on website, portal and ERP, etc.

An audit report with gaps identified and recommended actions is prepared and sent to concerned units for implementation of necessary actions to close the gaps identified during the audit.

• Risk management

The IRQAOA Department reviews the risk incidents registered by departments and submits the Risk analysis report to VC. VC shall review the risk analysis report recommend actions for decision making.

• Ensuring compliance with accreditation standards

The IRQAOA Department keeps track of all the latest updates in the MOE standards and reviews its impact on the institutional policy and procedures. It is the responsibility of the IRQAOA Department to ensure that all the necessary amendments as per the latest updates are reflected in the appropriate policies. It ensures that all the important documents of the Institution are amended as per the changes in the standards set by the MOE.

Outreach and accreditation

• International accreditation

The IRQAOA department facilitates the institution in obtaining recognized international accreditations for its various programs such as AACSB and ABET. The department also identifies recognized global ranking agencies for achieving ranking of the institution to enhance its brand image. Some of the ranking agencies currently identified include QS, Time Higher Education, Shanghai, etc.

• Benchmarking

Benchmarking in higher education is an important tool of setting higher goals and achieving them through defining specific academic processes and procedures. SUC benchmark its Key Performance Indicators and processes with institutions both inside and outside the UAE for the purpose of improving its process, programs and operations of the institution and compare the performance of SUC with the benchmarked institutions. SUC enters into Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the institutions at the UAE and international level to make the benchmarking process more realistic and useful.

Apart from external benchmarking, SUC processes also includes internal benchmarking wherein every academic & academic support service unit at SUC has predefined the key performance indicators and that are to be achieved as per benchmark which is developed based on the previous year’s performance. The IR and IRQAOA department reviews the benchmark set by different units and guides them on updating the same during the planning review of all units. SUC has also adopted standardizing Course Syllabus, nature of assessment tools, quality check of question papers to meet learning outcomes, program learning outcomes linked with the skills and competencies desirable by the industry at the academic level.

• Best practices

SUC policy and procedures are prepared based on the guidelines provided by UAE Ministry of Education 2019 standards and taking in consideration some of the best practices followed at a similar to SUC level of higher education institution inside and outside of UAE the region. SUC reviews its policy and procedure manuals before the start of the academic year and incorporates the necessary changes for the coming year. Annually reviews are carried out at the end of the spring semester to identify status of current practices followed at SUC and to align with the requirement of MOE.

• Facilitate data for awards, ranking and listing

The Quality Assurance Unit provides data to other departments which are working towards achievement of renowned awards, and listing of SUC at national and international levels. The department helps in preparing documents, evaluating and developing application forms and equivalencies for Programs.