The Role of Relationship Building in Peer Review

For practitioners working in Illinois community colleges, program review can often feel like just one more obligation among many. Yet, in my experience and I use my because I have previously worked in community colleges; the most lasting improvements come not from new tools or templates, but from the relationships we build with each other as colleagues, mentors, and thought partners in completing the program review process.

Over the past five years, I have been deeply involved with OCCRL’s Program Review Illinois (PRI) partnership with the Illinois Community College Board, where we have worked to build a strong foundation for the state’s 48 community colleges. Together, we've developed equity rubrics, training materials, feedback tools, and a growing collection of practical guidance, all designed to make program review more meaningful than a simple box-checking exercise. But these resources matter most because they rest on something less tangible and more important: the relationships that support and sustain them.

As a senior research assistant with OCCRL whose sole project has been Program Review Illinois and whose time in this role is now concluding, my observations and conclusions are shaped by close, sustained involvement with every aspect of PRI. In this reflection, I offer my perspective, which combines both deep familiarity with the work’s intentions and first-hand insight into its challenges and evolution. I’ve seen firsthand how relationship-building changes the way practitioners approach peer review. In many instances, two colleges, at first wary of each other’s feedback, built rapport by exchanging stories about their students’ challenges. What started as a perfunctory review meeting turned into an honest exchange of strategies for supporting first-generation learners, and both colleges later piloted new advising approaches based on their conversation. This is just one example of how trust and connection transform the program review process from compliance to collaboration.

Relationship building isn’t just a helpful supplement to peer review; it’s the backbone that makes the process work. I draw this conclusion from my five years of practice and reflection, and it shapes the analysis and recommendations that follow in this final section.

I have come to the conclusion that it’s helpful to view peer review not as a technical task but as a human interaction. When professionals open their work to others for honest feedback, the outcome depends on the tools used and the trust and connection among everyone involved.

Relationships are Foundation, Not the Courtesy

Peer review requires practitioners to share their work and sometimes their vulnerabilities for outside evaluation, often with little shared context. The feeling is common: another program review cycle, another set of forms, and the temptation to present only our most polished accomplishments. If a program team senses that reviewers are simply looking for problems, they respond by showcasing only their successes and hiding the less polished aspects. But when the team believes colleagues and reviewers are invested partners, genuinely interested in their growth, they're more willing to bring forward real challenges, where meaningful improvement starts. In this way, the trust essential to authentic peer review cannot be demanded; it must be built over time.

Relationships also shape how feedback is taken in or pushed away. When a trusted reviewer offers a tough recommendation, it feels like an investment in the program’s future; the same advice from an unknown reviewer can feel like a harsh judgment. Trust allows reviewers to challenge programs to grow while making it clear they are allies, combining genuine support with honest expectations and enabling real development.

That trust also helps avoid the most common pitfalls of peer review. Without it, important context is lost; a college serving working adults, first-generation students, and low-income learners may be unfairly assessed against an abstract ideal rather than understood for its unique mission and challenges. Improvement stalls at the reporting stage; findings are documented but not acted upon, and the same problems resurface cycle after cycle. The absence of trust also keeps good work isolated, preventing innovations that could help others from ever moving beyond a single institution. This does not mean the expectation for quality is removed or lowered. Relationships don’t replace quality; they make the process meaningful and actionable. Ultimately, the most valuable thing a review can offer is honest feedback a program can truly use and act on.

Five Years: Barriers, Shifts, and Realities for Practitioners

OCCRL’s Program Review Illinois (PRI) is a statewide initiative developed in partnership with the Illinois Community College Board to strengthen program review processes across all 48 Illinois community colleges. Again, I have been heavily invested in PRI for the last five years. In that time, PRI supports colleges by providing equity-focused rubrics, training materials, and practical guidance to make program review a meaningful process for continuous improvement rather than a mere compliance exercise. Central to PRI’s efforts is the Program Review Advisory Committee (PRAC), a group of community college practitioners and state leaders that meets quarterly to discuss challenges, share ideas, and guide the evolution of program review across the state. The Advisory Committee serves as a bridge between state policy and campus realities, ensuring the process remains responsive to practitioners' needs while meeting state expectations.

Looking back over my five years collaborating with PRAC, it’s clear that PRI’s role as a compliance mechanism has grown stronger, but its deeper, transformational impact hasn’t reached the scale initially envisioned, at least not yet. This gap isn’t simply the result of insufficient effort; it reflects underlying structural challenges. As practitioners, we bring real commitment to the process, but we’re often held back by a lack of time, robust data systems, professional development, and institutional supports needed to translate program review insights into actionable decisions. Many of us face high staff turnover and shifting institutional priorities, making it difficult to sustain long-term relationships. One way to mitigate this is to document partnership histories and intentionally onboard new colleagues into existing networks, rather than starting from scratch each cycle. True cultural change can’t simply be mandated or wished into being, especially in systems that face chronic resource limitations and lengthy review cycles. Relationship building is vital here because strong, trust-based partnerships help us work together to overcome these barriers and move beyond compliance toward meaningful transformation. Naming these constraints honestly is essential as we consider the next phase of this work.

What stands out to me the most from my time with PRI is how I have witnessed a fundamental shift in attitude: colleges moved from being mere recipients of program review to becoming true partners in shaping how the program works. This became visible in day-to-day work. The quarterly PRI Advisory Committee meetings, for example, gave colleges space to share concerns, offer ideas, and see their input shape the direction of the process. Feedback loops, especially through the peer reviewer project, enabled honest, on-the-ground perspectives to reach the system level and result in practical, visible changes. None of this would have been possible without the steady leadership and support of ICCB. Their willingness to listen, combined with their authority, sent a clear message that colleges’ voices mattered and that the intent was genuine improvement, not just compliance for its own sake.

Throughout, the thread running through everything that lasted was relationships. Tools like the equity rubric and training modules made a difference, but only because they rested on a foundation of trust that allowed for honest conversations and genuine reflection. Ultimately, while the resources and toolkits developed over the past five years have real value, the most significant achievement has been the strengthening of relationships and trust, which have enabled practitioners to keep pushing for equity, even when structural, institutional, and cultural shifts and external pressures make that difficult.

Relationships as the Leverage Point

To me, this all points to one clear takeaway: investing in relationship infrastructure is the surest way to move program review from a compliance exercise to work that actually makes a difference. The next chapter for PRI is not mainly about producing better documents or more polished resources; it’s about deepening the connections among the people doing this work across the state. If we want program review to become a source of real improvement, we need to treat relationships as a core part of our professional infrastructure, something that requires as much intentionality as any technical task.

I offer a few practitioner-focused strategies that I believe may assist this realization:

• Create Peer Learning Triads:  Instead of relying solely on large committees, form small, cross-college triads to discuss specific challenges. These groups can provide both accountability and support in a low-pressure setting.
• Build a Statewide Practitioner Directory: Peer learning simply can’t happen across 48 colleges if people don’t know who their peers are. With staff turnover always in play, relying on informal networks leaves too much to chance.
• Host Open Office Hours: Set aside monthly “open office” sessions (virtual or in-person) where practitioners can drop in to discuss questions or share successes. These informal spaces build familiarity and trust over time.
• Sustain a Community of Practice: A living Community of Practice helps ideas and innovations travel from one college to another rather than stalling at their origin. It also lets the unique challenges faced by a small rural college become visible to larger institutions, fostering mutual understanding.
• Peer Mentor Networks: Formalize how practitioners support each other by connecting experienced reviewers with newcomers and focusing the peer review process on building capacity, not just checking boxes.
• Share Small Wins and Feedback Loops: Use newsletters, meetings, or online spaces to highlight relationship-driven changes, such as a college adopting a peer’s data visualization strategy or a team’s new approach to student engagement. After each round of reviews, convene reviewers and reviewed teams for a debrief to reflect on what felt supportive and how the process could be improved.
  

These strategies aren’t separate from the technical work; they’re what I believe make it effective. Relationships turn isolated tools into an active, evolving system, and investing in them is the kind of work that grows in value the longer we do it. A rubric is just another form unless a community comes together to make sense of it. Training loses its impact if there aren’t ongoing relationships to reinforce and expand on what’s learned. In short, relationships turn isolated tools into an active, evolving system, and investing in them is the kind of work that grows in value the longer you do it.

Conclusion: A Practitioner Call to Action

Rubrics set the criteria for what reviewers pay attention to, but it’s the relationships that decide whether those findings lead to change. After five years, that’s the clearest lesson to take away, and perhaps the most important one for the future. If program review in Illinois is going to move beyond compliance and truly help programs and students grow, then building and maintaining strong relationships isn’t just a nice addition; it’s at the heart of the work and requires as much discipline as any technical task.

As I step away from this work, at least for now, I hope that we will all continue to invest in the relationships that make program review meaningful. Whether it's reaching out to a peer at another college, mentoring a new reviewer, or making space for honest conversation at your next meeting, these concrete actions are what will move this work forward. The challenges are real, but I have seen the difference that genuine collaboration can make. Thank you for letting me be part of this journey. Let's keep building, one relationship at a time.