Dec. 6, 2016

In March 2016, the Standards Committee proposed an Ethics Standard be added to Professional Degree, Post-Professional Degree, and Post-Professional Residency Standards. The Standards Committee has reviewed the solicited open comment responses, and also incorporated the responses in the open comment for the same proposed Standard within the draft of operational standards for professional master’s programs. The final approved Standard is: The institution must demonstrate honesty and integrity in all interactions that pertain to the athletic training program.

Note: For Residency programs the Standard will read: “The sponsoring organization must demonstrate honesty and integrity in all interactions that pertain to the athletic training program.”

The Commission would like programs to understand that this Standard will only be cited to address acts of purposeful dishonesty or lack of integrity, and not inadvertent situations of mistaken information being provided. For example, a program that is on probation that removes mention of CAATE Accreditation and associated program status to avoid notifying potential students of their probationary status would be cited for this Standard. Programs will not be asked to submit demonstration of compliance for this Standard for a self-study, but site visitors will have the ability to cite this Standard only if unethical practices are noted during the site visit. The nature of the subsequent documentation requested will be dependent on rationale for the original citation. This Standard will be implemented on July 1, 2017 and affects all program types. Questions related to this Standard or its implementation should be addressed to support@caate.net.