Thomas Tommasini
T. Tommasini - SUPSI towards the new institutional accreditation
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SUPSI has launched the process for the second cycle of institutional accreditation, the procedure required by the Federal Act on the Promotion and Coordination of the University Sector (LPSU), which is necessary to retain the designation of university of applied sciences and access to federal funding. The first cycle ended in 2021 with a positive decision by the Swiss Accreditation Council, which acknowledged the strength of the SUPSI Quality Assurance System (QAS). The work for the new accreditation, valid for the period 2028–2035, began in September 2025 and will conclude in the first quarter of 2028. We spoke about this complex and cross-cutting internal and external evaluation process with Thomas Tommasini, Head of the SUPSI Quality Service.
What are the main stages of the reaccreditation procedure, and which people and areas of SUPSI will be involved in the working groups?
The procedure as a whole rests on two main stages: on the one hand, the Self-Evaluation Report of our School, and on the other, the visit of the Expert Group, which will result in its own qualified and independent assessment. Based on these two evaluations, the Swiss Accreditation Council will decide on our reaccreditation.
The drafting of the Self-Evaluation Report is the first stage of the procedure, which will last until June 2027. The Report will involve active participation from staff members, students, and alumni through several workshop sessions in the first semester of 2026, as well as a general consultation in autumn of the same year. The Expert Group’s visit is scheduled for September 2027, with two days of meetings that will also involve representative groups of staff, students, and alumni.
How will the SUPSI community – students, lecturers, researchers, and staff – be called to contribute to this process?
We will organise workshops and discussion tables bringing together different profiles from Services, Departments, and Affiliated Schools, also including student representatives. The discussion topics will stem from the accreditation standards, as well as from the first self-evaluation phase that will take place in the last months of 2025.
For example, lecturers and researchers will work not only on standards concerning education and research, but also on issues such as sustainability and staff development.
We will ask the different representative groups to be self-critical during these meetings, while at the same time highlighting what has already been achieved or is underway. Let’s not forget that, compared to the first evaluation conducted during the initial accreditation cycle, several improvements have been carried out in the meantime, and it will be important to bring them to light.
Accreditation is not just a legal requirement. How does it concretely help strengthen the Institution’s continuous improvement?
Thanks to the accreditation procedure, all universities of applied sciences are assessed using the same criteria. The core of the procedure is our QAS, through which we ensure and strive to strengthen the quality of our mandates in basic and continuing education and research.
It is a concept of quality culture rooted in continuous improvement, where dialogue with external experts allows us to understand where we really stand and which areas still need development. Accreditation is a formal recognition that takes place every seven years, but it is something we work towards every day by following those continuous improvement principles that we have also embedded in our Quality Policy and Strategy.
Looking beyond the procedure, what new challenges or developments do you foresee for the Quality Assurance System in the coming years?
The QAS, with this unified and integrated vision, is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. Several challenges and developments have been faced, and more will come, since it is important not to remain still but to keep progressing and evolving. In this perspective, over the past year we reorganised our QAS to make it more coherent, placing our mandates at the centre and bringing Departments closer together.
More broadly, the challenge is to ensure that all internal and external stakeholders understand that our QAS is an integral part of our activities, where everyone can contribute to improving our School and the quality of the services we deliver.