As a longstanding Academy Mentor, peer reviewer and team chair, Diane Nyhammer has worked with institutions across the country, an experience that enriched her professional career and has given her a deep appreciation for the diversity of HLC’s membership. 

Tell us about yourself and your work with HLC.  

My career began as an English faculty member at McHenry County College in Crystal Lake, IL. It was there that I learned about HLC and the expectations for accreditation by co-chairing the HLC self-study for continued accreditation. 

I also served as the assistant director for academic affairs for the Illinois Board of Higher Education and as assistant director of accreditation services for HLC. During that time at HLC, I participated in the “Assessment Think Tank,” where the idea of the Assessment Academy was born.   

After leaving HLC as a staff member, the remainder of my professional career was based in the community college sector until my retirement last year. However, my involvement with HLC continued through all those years. I continue to serve as an Academy Mentor and as a peer reviewer and team chair. I have had the privilege of working alongside assessment experts at many HLC workshops and events over the past 20 years. I am also currently serving on HLC’s Annual Conference Planning Committee and Programming Team. 

What has participating as an HLC Academy mentor taught you?  

My involvement in HLC has been the best professional development of my career. Every institution I have visited or worked with has taught me some novel way to approach a problem or shown me how all the pieces of an organization work (or don’t work) together. I have come to fully appreciate how an institution’s context truly does influence its mission and its programs, and how institutional culture affects its ability to fulfill that mission. I have also learned more about the tremendous diversity within higher education. 

What is the biggest advantage to being a member of the HLC community?  

The people I have had the good fortune to meet and learn from are the greatest gift I have gained through HLC. I have friends who helped deepen my understanding of accreditation, who modeled how best to lead a team, who gave me new or better strategies for advancing assessment for student learning, who have helped guide me in my own career path, who have been thought partners, and who have so generously shared their time and expertise with me. My professional life has been so much richer as a result of my HLC friends. 

What has surprised you most during your experience as an HLC volunteer?  

The seemingly endless variety of contexts in which higher educational professionals work, doing essentially the same thing, has been the greatest surprise to me. This has both complicated and enriched my work as a peer reviewer and assessment mentor. The opportunities and challenges of accreditation and assessment work are as varied as the institutional types, locations and cultures. And all of this provides so many learning opportunities for those of us doing work for and with HLC, which is what leads me to my number one tip: listen, with a curious and open mind. 

What is your pro tip for new Academy mentors?   

One of the best tips I heard was to listen in order to learn and understand, and to reserve judgment. The best training I received stressed that we’re not looking for things that are wrong that we can tell people how to fix. Rather, we are seeking to understand how colleagues are working toward institutional improvement and student success in their own, unique environment. As an Academy Mentor, you are continuously given the opportunity to understand the same struggles all of us encounter in higher education, but from a new angle, and to recognize each institution will have different factors in play.