VECAP has representation on the Council on Rehabilitation Education’s (CORE’s) Commission on Standards and Accreditation.  Dr. Juliet Fried has served as VECAP’s representative since 2006.

The mission of CORE is “the accreditation of Rehabilitation Counselor Education (RCE) Programs to promote the effective delivery of rehabilitation services to individuals with disabilities by promoting and fostering continuing review and improvement of master’s degree level RCE Programs”.  The Commission on Standards and Accreditation is the evaluation component of CORE whose responsibility is to “evaluate programs for their compliance with standards and to recommend to CORE the granting of recognition.”  The Commission is separate from the CORE Board but the Chair of the Commission is a member of the CORE Board. 

The Commission meets face-to-face once a year for several days, usually in mid-July.  While our representative is responsible for learning the process of CORE accreditation including all of the accreditation standards, and has been involved in assuring compliance with these standards, she has been particularly attentive to those pertaining to vocational assessment and career development.  Just as interesting is how academic programs are meeting the standards.  All of the required standards can be viewed online at the CORE website (http://www.core-rehab.org).  These are important to our field because what we promote as standards of excellence should be in line with specific CORE standards, or perhaps the reverse has a greater sense of relevance - specific CORE standards pertaining to vocational assessment and career development should be consistent with that of the field.  While Juliet believes there is a great deal of consistency, VECAP needs to continue to have a seat at this Commission’s table to insure that collaboration is maintained and enhanced as standards are reviewed currently and with possible revisions in the future.