Belle Wheelan to Retire as Head of Southern Accreditor

Belle S. Wheelan, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges, will retire next June after what will have been 20 years in the role, the accrediting agency announced Monday.

Wheelan, who served as Virginia’s education secretary and as president of two community colleges in Virginia before taking the reins at SACS in 2005, has been an influential, outspoken—and sometimes controversial—figure in accreditation and federal policy circles.

She broke numerous racial and gender barriers in her career and in her role as an accreditor advocated for diversity as well as for student learning.

Wheelan has frequently pushed back against federal efforts to dictate how accreditors assess the performance and quality of colleges and universities, often arguing against “bright line” indicators of student learning and challenging political influence in public higher education.

SACSCOC’s aggressive stance on such matters has frequently made Wheelan and the accreditor a target for critics. Historically Black colleges and universities have at times accused the accreditor of unfairly targeting the institutions, a charge that made Wheelan bristle.

And political leaders in several Southern states have encouraged (and in Florida’s case required) their institutions to find alternatives to the Southern accreditor.