Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Hilary Campbell’s Design Building Remodeling Program wins reaccreditation process

Photos and story by Janis Nichols

Hilary Campbell is not easily discouraged. Even though she’s the only full-time faculty member for the Design Building Remodeling Program (Building Construction Technology) based at the Rock Creek Campus, and only has been on campus for three years, she recently completed the reaccreditation process with a national accreditation team.

The National Kitchen & Bath Association (NKBA) is a critical partner to some 60,000 members who work in the kitchen and bath industry. It is the accrediting organization that bestows legitimacy and competency within kitchen and bath remodeling programs at a variety of institutions such as Boston Architectural College, Indiana State University, the University of Georgia, Virginia Tech, the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and PCC.

While Campbell was working her way through an already arduous process, the NKBA was undergoing its own identity shift that involved replacing the organization’s board and leadership team while reevaluating its own role in the industry. For Campbell, the NKBA’s reorganization meant that what should have been a six-month process took longer than two years to complete.

“Things were complicated from the start,” said Campbell. “The Building Construction Technology (BCT) Design Build Remodeling program at Rock Creek is the only one of its kind in the country that is certified through the NKBA combining design with hands-on construction training. The uniqueness of our program, along with the NKBA’s internal issues, made this reaccreditation process very difficult.”

Shannon Baird, BCT program’s co-chair, was quick to congratulate his colleague.

“After more than two years of extremely hard work, our program has been reaccredited,” he said. “This would not have happened without Hilary. The major changes that Hilary has made to the program were affirmed by the new leadership of the NKBA and held up as a model of where their own group would like to see institutions, such as community colleges, focus their efforts. Moving forward NKBA would like to focus on reducing the skilled labor shortage in their industry through hands-on programs like ours. Hilary and others in our department continue to reach out to high school and middle school students who are just deciding on future career paths.”

Baird added, “We are the only program of our kind connecting the NKBA with hands-on construction personnel. We are proud of the hard work that Hilary put in to secure this accreditation, including weathering a change in leadership within the NKBA itself.”

Last June, Rock Creek’s Design Build Remodeling student Stephanie Crosson was named the program’s Outstanding Student, an annual award sponsored through NKBA and SubZero-Wolf Appliances.

This fall, Campbell started her fourth year at the Rock Creek program. With the accreditation issue back in the box until its next renewal in 2023, she can now fully concentrate on student success. She is already focused on the 2017 National NKBA student competition. She has also been invited to discuss PCC’s Design Building Remodeling program and the current crisis for skilled labor in the industry at the NKBA convention.