Dear Friends of the Conservatory,

It is a pleasure to announce that the Conservatory has been granted national accreditation from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Precollegiate Arts Schools (ACCPAS).

The field of community arts education owes it origins to Jane Addams, who in 1889 founded a program for immigrant children at Chicago 's famous Hull House. Other “settlement houses” soon followed suit. Providing access to arts education has been one of the defining ideals of our movement ever since and is an ideal closely held by the Conservatory.

As the field has grown and matured the logic of establishing threshold standards has emerged. ACCPAS was founded in 2000 as an offshoot of the agencies that accredit arts education curricula at the university level and is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as the accrediting body for our field. The central goal of the accrediting commission is to support educational excellence in the arts.

The Conservatory's philosophy of music education is driven by the paradoxical commitment to access and excellence. Recognizing that the pursuit of accreditation would provide an outstanding opportunity to submit our philosophy and its implementation to the most rigorous external review, we began preparations four years ago.

In September 2007 a comprehensive self-study of all the programs and operations of the Conservatory was submitted to the commission. In October 2007 a visiting team (the dean for administrative affairs, Yale University School of Music and the executive director of the Community Music Program, Cincinnati University) spent two days observing, interviewing and reviewing the school's programs and operations.

In January 2008 the commission granted accreditation to the Conservatory. The visitors indicated that over 70% of schools seeking accreditation fail in their first attempt. It is indeed affirming that PCM was successful with its first effort and now joins a small number of schools in the first generation of accredited community schools of the arts.

In its findings the commission issued a number of commendations that are a privilege to share here.  The commission found that the Conservatory exhibits the following:

• A clear mission that influences all aspects of the school
• A uniformly excellent faculty with strong performance and teaching credentials
• An excellent board committed to the development of the Conservatory
• A strong staff focused on providing quality service for the various constituencies

All of the Conservatory's educational programs were approved for accreditation and include the following departments:

Chamber Music

Guitar

Outreach

Piano

Strings

Vocal Arts

Woodwinds/Brass/Percussion

Theory/History/Composition

Young Musicians

The commission has established standards that have strengthened our field in general and the Conservatory in particular. We have created educational and operational models and review processes that will continue to strengthen our programs for years to come. Virtually everyone on the faculty, board of directors and staff (over 70 people) contributed to this exercise. It is a privilege to express my thanks to all of them and the commission itself.

Stephen McCurry

Executive Director