Mechanics for Submission 

• The response document with supporting documentation must be submitted as one zipped folder. If your response is too large to send by email, contact CEA to request an upload link.

• The required format for the report is an editable Word document with hyperlinks to supporting documents. 

• Supporting documentation must consist of stable documents which CEA is required to maintain for the length of the period of accreditation. You may NOT include links to any cloud-based document storage location. (URLs for publicly accessible web pages are acceptable.)

• Supporting documents can be in any common file format (.pdf, .docs, .xlsx, .jpg, etc.). Do not embed supporting documentation within the main report document. Supporting documentation must be included as separate files, with hyperlinks in the main report document.

• The response and all supporting documents should be contained within a single folder. Please do not use subfolders. 

• If links to publicly accessible URLs are included, it is important to link to the specific webpage where the supporting information is found. For example, if a school’s URL is used, the hyperlink must be to the specific page where supporting information is located, not simply to the school’s homepage. 

• Be sure that the name assigned to each supporting document in the main report file matches exactly the name of the document in the folder. 

• Please keep file names short, and when naming a document, please do not use any of the following symbols, as they will not transfer to CEA’s files properly: “  #  %  &  *  :  <  >  ?  \  /  { }.   

 Creating Working Hyperlinks 

• In order for the hyperlinks in the main report document to work properly, we recommend putting the response document and all supporting documents on a flash drive and then creating the links. Each document should be in the same folder as the response before you hyperlink them. 

• If the reference is to a specific page within a document, not to the document as a whole, include the page number with the listing of the document and link to that specific page. 

• Prior to submitting to CEA, confirm that all hyperlinks are functional. The best way to do this is to give the flash drive to someone not connected at all with your program. Ask the person to put the flash drive in his/her computer and verify that all links are functional. 

• Zip the folder after the hyperlinks have been created.