SACS Names New President

The leader of the Southern Regional Education Board will take over as president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, the organization’s board announced last week.

Stephen L. Pruitt, who has led SREB since July 2018, is replacing Belle Wheelan, who is retiring after 20 years at the helm of the nation’s largest accrediting agency. Pruitt will take over Aug. 1. 

At SREB, Pruitt worked with state leaders across the South on how to improve education from preschool to college and into the workforce. He helped to launch efforts to support students’ workforce-readiness skills and improve pathways to quality credentials and careers, according to a news release. His five priority areas were AI in education, longitudinal literacy, career pathways, educator workforce and postsecondary.

“It’s been the honor of a lifetime to be president of SREB, and the work we’ve done together in the past seven years will continue,” Pruitt said in a statement. 

Before SREB, Pruitt was the commissioner of education in Kentucky.

He’s stepping into an accreditor leadership role at a critical moment for accrediting agencies, who play a key role in overseeing colleges. Institutions must be recognized by an Education Department–approved accreditor in order to access federal student aid. Conservatives have argued in recent years that the agencies, especially SACS, have overstepped their roles.

Late last month, President Donald Trump took aim at accreditors in an executive order that called for the education secretary to penalize accreditors that require colleges to meet diversity, equity and inclusion standards. SACS doesn’t have any standards related to DEI.