The U.S. Department of Education announced today that it had created two new committees to deal with issues of accreditation and federal student aid during planned sessions of negotiated rule-making, the process by which federal agencies work with outside groups to craft changes in federal programs.

The department’s announcement, in today’s Federal Register, lists the members of the two committees and the dates they will meet, along with the topics they may tackle.

The department also named the members of a previously announced rule-making committee that will consider two new federal grant programs for high-achieving, low-income students, the Academic Competitiveness Grants and the Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Grants.

Department officials had been weighing whether to create an accreditation committee for several months. In the notice, they said they had decided to form the accreditation committee, along with a committee on “general provisions” in the Title IV federal student-aid programs, after hearing from “stakeholders” — individuals and groups with an interest in the rules — at a recent summit on accreditation and at a series of regional hearings that took place last fall.