Audit of Quinsigamond Community College Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

An overview of the purpose and process of auditing Quinsigamond Community College.

Overview

In accordance with Section 12 of Chapter 11 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Office of the State Auditor has conducted a performance audit of certain activities of Quinsigamond Community College (QCC) for the period July 1, 2017 through March 31, 2019.

We conducted this performance audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our finding and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Below is a list of our audit objectives, indicating each question we intended our audit to answer; the conclusion we reached regarding each objective; and, if applicable, where each objective is discussed in the audit findings.

Objective	Conclusion
Does QCC ensure that background checks are conducted for students taking early childhood education (ECE) courses and for the faculty and staff of QCC’s Children's School?	No; see Finding 1
Does QCC’s Children's School comply with the state Department of Early Education and Care’s (EEC’s) licensing requirements for securing the safety of children?	Yes

 

To achieve our objectives, we gained an understanding of QCC’s internal control environment related to the objectives, reviewed college policies and procedures, and conducted inquiries with management.

Additionally, we performed the following procedures:

• To determine whether students in QCC’s ECE courses had the required background checks, we obtained a list of all students enrolled in ECE courses during the audit period from the registrar and compared it to the list of Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) and Sex Offender Registry Information (SORI) checks performed by the campus police.
• To determine whether students in the ECE Program’s capstone courses had fingerprint-based checks, we obtained a list of students enrolled in capstone courses during our audit period from the registrar and compared it to fingerprint-based-check receipts maintained in students’ ECE Program files.
• To determine whether the faculty and staff of the Children’s School had the required background checks, we obtained a list of all employees at the Children’s School from QCC’s Human Resources Department (HR) and reviewed completed reports of CORI, SORI, and fingerprint-based checks to verify that the checks had been performed for all individuals employed at the Children’s School during the audit period.
• To confirm that the Children’s School secured the safety of children at the facility and ensured compliance with EEC licensing requirements related to the security of children, we reviewed the school’s background check policies, personnel policies, incident logs, emergency plans, and fire drill log.

Data Reliability

To test the reliability of the registrar’s data for students who took certain ECE courses and therefore required background checks, we obtained course lists from two ECE Program faculty members to trace the students back to the registrar’s list. To test the completeness and accuracy of QCC’s list of faculty and staff members at the Children’s School, which we obtained from HR, we obtained a current list of faculty and staff members from the director of the Children’s School to trace back to the HR list for reliability. Additionally, on all data sets, we tested for duplicates. Based on the results of these data reliability assessment procedures, we determined that the information obtained for our audit period was sufficiently reliable for the purposes of our audit work.

Date published:	March 26, 2020