LARK Education Associates has an experienced workforce consisting of NACCAS Accreditation Consultants and Accreditation Specialists who are intimately familiar with a vast array of ways to demonstrate compliance so you always have the support you need and can depend on our experience and knowledge.
The driving force behind LARK Education Associates and its commitment to provide the best possible accreditation consulting and compliance services is Randi Smith, its founder and president.
Randi, a licensed Master Cosmetology Instructor and a licensed Managing Cosmetologist, has over 30 years of experience in all aspects of the cosmetology industry and has the knowledge and expertise to achieve positive outcomes for her clients seeking accreditation with the country's largest, nationally recognized accreditor of cosmetology schools.
For over 16 years, Randi served as the Vice-President and Director of a chain of NACCAS accredited schools. In that role, she successfully took schools through the initial accreditation and reaccreditation process and ensured their compliance with accrediting agency standards and guidelines. She was responsible for school management, curriculum development and implementation, and for overseeing financial aid processing.
Randi Smith worked for 4 years as an Accreditation Specialist for that largest accreditor, the National Accrediting Commission of Career Arts & Sciences (NACCAS), where she provided customer service to applicant and accredited institutions, and conducted compliance reviews of Institutional Self-Studies, school catalogs, enrollment contracts, satisfactory progress policies, and ability-to-benefit policies and practices for compliance with NACCAS' Standards and Rules of Practice and Procedure.
Besides managing evaluation team visits to hundreds of schools, Randi also conducted training at NACCAS accreditation workshops, had a major role in the training of new NACCAS accreditation specialists, and assisted in preparing NACCAS' responses for submission to NACIQI, the committee comprised by the U. S. Department of Education (ED) to make recommendations to the Secretary of ED to grant re-recognition to accrediting agencies.
During her tenure as a NACCAS Accreditation Specialist, Randi became acutely aware of the pressing need many applicants and accredited institutions have for quality, professional, effective assistance to obtain and maintain accreditation. She was in a position to see firsthand the struggles of schools, especially small and medium-sized institutions without the benefit of a corporate support structure, to make their way through a complex and sometimes confusing array of rules and regulations.
Aware that there are many accreditation consultants in the field offering their services, Randi was also keenly aware that there are extremely few, if any, who could offer those services from the perspectives she could bring to the process: as an accreditation specialist, as a cosmetology school director and manager, as a corporate officer of a cosmetology chain, as a licensed educator, and as a licensed managing cosmetologist. With her knowledge and real-world experience, Randi is uniquely qualified as an accreditation consultant who can educate schools to understand how to implement the accreditation requirements and empower them to become self-sufficient. LARK Education Associates was founded to make this possible.
Having spent her entire career dedicated to her chosen profession, Randi takes great pride in assisting institutions and in providing superior service that is above and beyond expectations. Randi is well known for delivering!