Question: Which association accredited the university in which Alex Phillips was Director of Assessment and Curriculum Development?
Context: Richard W. Strong (February 26, 1946 – January 27, 2008) was an American education expert, former teacher and author.  He co-founded the Institute for Community and Difference.  Strong consulted the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and dozens of school district across the United States, as well as teacher and professional organizations and state education agencies.  A recognized leader in the movement for authentic assessment, Strong was a former district-level coordinator for gifted and talented education and a prolific writer on many topics in education. The International Accreditation Forum, Inc. (IAF) is the world association of Conformity Assessment Accreditation bodies and other bodies interested in conformity assessment in the fields of management systems, products, services, personnel and other similar programs of conformity assessment.  Its primary function is to develop a single worldwide program of conformity assessment which reduces risk for business and its customers by assuring them that accredited certificates may be relied upon.  Accreditation assures users of the competence and impartiality of the body accredited.  IAF members accredit certification or registration bodies that issue certificates attesting that an organization's management, products or personnel comply with a specified standard (called conformity assessment). Alex Phillips is an Assistant Professor and Director of Assessment and Curriculum Development at Commonwealth College, the honors college at the University of Massachusetts.  His poetry and translations have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Open City, and jubilat, and in Ted Kooser's newspaper column American Life in Poetry.  His book-length poem, "Crash Dome", is published by Factory Hollow Press.  "Crash Dome" was voted one of the top 20 poetry books of 2010 by readers of "The Believer". The National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) is a professional association of undergraduate honors programs, colleges, directors, deans, faculty, staff, and students.  NCHC has 1,342 members in the United States and abroad, providing support for institutions and individuals to develop and expand honors education.  The organization has its national headquarters at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  Through its annual conference, professional networking, and publications, NCHC provides a platform for honors curriculum development, program assessment, national and international study opportunities, internships, honors advising, scholarships, independent research, program assessment and job listings.  NCHC also maintains links with regional and state honors organizations. Curriculum development is a process of improving the curriculum.  Various approaches have been used in developing curricula.  Commonly used approaches consist of analysis (i.e. need analysis, task analysis), design (i.e. objective design), selecting (i.e. choosing appropriate learning/teaching methods and appropriate assessment method) formation ( i.e. formation of the curriculum implementation committee / curriculum evaluation committee) and review ( i.e. curriculum review committee). The University of Massachusetts is the five-campus public university system and the only public research system in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  The University system includes five campuses (Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell, and a medical school in Worcester), and a satellite campus, with system administration in Boston and Shrewsbury.  The system is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges and across its campuses enrolls 73,000 students. Assessing Pupils' Progress (APP) has been developed for use in schools in England and Wales to enable them to apply Assessment for Learning (AfL) consistently across both the secondary and primary National Curriculum.  APP assessment guidelines were finalised in 2008 for Mathematics, English, Science and ICT.  Initial development of APP was undertaken by the National Strategies but is now overseen by the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA).  Currently the status of APP is that it is 'recommended' that schools use it but it is not statutory.  With the change in UK government in May 2010, the status of APP could change.  Ofsted said APP was unnecessary in 2010, and the APP documents have not been on the Department for Education's website since 2011.  The coalition government has got rid of it. Learning Management is the capacity to design pedagogic strategies that achieve learning outcomes for students.The learning management concept was developed by Richard Smith of Central Queensland University (Australia) and is derived from architectural design (an artful arrangement of resources for definite ends) and is best rendered as design with intent.  Learning management then means an emphasis on ‘the design and implementation of pedagogical strategies that achieve learning outcomes.  That is, in the balance between and emphasis on curriculum development and pedagogy, the emphasis is definitely on pedagogical strategies.  Underpinning the learning management premise is a new set of knowledge and skills, collectively referred to as a futures orientation and which attempt to prepare the mindsets and skill sets of teaching graduates for conditions of social change that pervade local and global societies in the 2000s.  The practitioner of learning management is referred to as a learning manager.  Adjunct to the theory and practice of learning management is the Learning Management Design Process (LMDP).  The LMDP is a curriculum planning process comprising 8 'learning design based' questions.  The process was developed by Professor David Lynch of Central Queensland University in 1998 and is used primarily as a tool to train teachers to teach [3] .  These 'eight questions' when answered in sequence focus the teacher to what is important when planning to teach students.  The LMDP organises its 8 questions through three sequential phases: Outcomes, Strategy and Evidence.  Each phase represents the bodies of information that its associated questions seeks to purse.  THe LMDP represents a rethink of the various curriculum development models that have predominated the planning of teaching and curriculum in the developed world over past decades.  The teacher develops their 'teaching plan' by engaging with each phase and its questions and recording ‘findings’ (or answers) in plan form. Alex Phillips (January 11, 1900 in Renfrew, Ontario – June 14, 1977) was a Canadian-born Mexican cinematographer and the father of Alex Phillips, Jr., also a cinematographer. Understanding by Design, or UbD, is an educational planning approach.  UbD is an example of backward design, the practice of looking at the outcomes in order to design curriculum units, performance assessments, and classroom instruction.  UbD focuses on teaching to achieve understanding.  It is advocated by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins in their "Understanding by Design" (1998), published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.  Understanding by Design and UbD are registered trademarks of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).
Answer: the New England Association of Schools and Colleges