The School of Physical Education and Sports began the self-evaluation process in the II Cycle of 2002, with the purpose of obtaining the accreditation of the Bachelor's Degree in Physical Education Teaching from the National System of Accreditation of Higher Education (SINAES) which is the only legal entity in the country that can grant accreditations in the country.

What is Accreditation?

According to SINAES, “it is the act of acceptance and registration in which, having mediated an evaluative process of research and evaluation based on agreed quality criteria, accreditation is granted or not, depending on the outcome of the process”. In other words, accreditation is a seal of quality of a major. Quality demonstrated through the self-evaluation process.

About the process:

In order to carry out this self-evaluation process, a Commission was appointed, which consisted of an administrative staff representative, Ms. Kattia Solís Piedra, at the beginning of the process and then Ms. Marlenne Rodríguez Campos; a student representative, Mr. Mauricio Rojas Méndez in the first stage and then Ms. Ana Marcela Chavarría Jiménez; and three faculty representatives, Mr. Víctor Salas Brenes, Dr. Walter Salazar Rojas and Dr. Carmen Grace Salazar Salas (coordinator).

On October 13, 2005, SINAES granted accreditation to the Bachelor's Degree in Physical Education Teaching for a period of four years. The official communication of the award was published in the newspaper La Nación on Sunday, November 6, 2005. The accreditation certificate was delivered to the School of Physical Education and Sports on Thursday, November 24 of the same year. Along with the accreditation, an improvement plan was established to guide the academic unit's work in the coming years.In accordance with the regulations in force, the first report on the progress of compliance was submitted to SINAES in December 2006. The second progress report was due in 2007, but due to the lack of a reviewer, it was not submitted until October 2008. The third progress report was presented in April 2009.

The first stage allowed the improvement of the internal processes of the degree program, which had already been developing within the Academic Unit for some time. One of the main achievements was the modification of the academic curriculum and the beginning of the Bachelor's Degree in Human Movement Sciences, which was offered for the first time in the first cycle of 2010.

In April 2009, the Self-Evaluation Committee for Accreditation of the School of Physical Education and Sports began to work with the information generated after obtaining the Accreditation and with the guidance of the staff of the Academic Evaluation Center (CEA), in order to prepare the Self-Evaluation Report for Accreditation.

On September 25, 2011, after the respective study by SINAES, the ACCORD-CNA-134-2011 was communicated, which granted the reaccreditation to the Bachelor's Degree in Physical Education Teaching and the Bachelor's Degree in Human Movement Sciences, until September 26, 2018.

With the reaccreditation of the academic unit 's bachelor's program, a new improvement commitment was established to ensure quality education. In 2013 and 2015, respective progress reports were presented on the fulfillment of the actions set forth in the commitment. By September this year, the Academic Unit would submit the third report.

In parallel, the internal review of the academic unit's operations would be strengthened beginning in the second semester of 2017 to formally initiate a new process of self-evaluation with a view to reaccreditation of the Bachelor of Science in Human Movement in 2018.

What criteria does SINAES evaluate?

In order to apply for accreditation from SINAES, the Self-Evaluation Commission for Accreditation Purposes prepared a report with six topics:

• The teaching staff.
• The curriculum or study plan.
• Student population.
• Infrastructure and equipment.
• Major's administration.
• The impact and relevance of the major.