Richland College - Quality Texas

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MALCOLM BALDRIGE NATIONAL QUALITY AWARDTABLE 1OrganizationTexas Instruments,City of DallasTexas NameplateBank OneDisneycompany won a Baldrige Award in 1995. Houghton,a member of Corning’s founding family,retired. The bottom fell out of the telecommunicationssector, and Corning struggled both in themarketplace and stock market. Now Houghton hasreturned along with the emphasis on quality, andCorning seems to be coming back. 1The opposite is certainly true in the case ofRichland College in Dallas, the first communitycollege to receive the Malcolm Baldrige NationalQuality Award.There, Steven K. Mittelstet, one of the school’s 27remaining 1972 founders, has nourished a cultureof high quality performance during his 27 years aspresident. That’s a term unheard of in the highereducation field, where the average president lastsless than seven years before leaving. 2“Mittelstet is the visionary force behind whatRichland College is today,” says Kay Eggleston,vice president for institutional effectiveness. “Hisleadership provides a consistency and unwaveringcommitment to quality performance from seniorstaff. He hires competent people and developsStarbucks experiencemusic projectSouthwest Airlines,Container StoreBranch-Smith PrintingPresbyterian Hospitalof DallasMedrad Inc.Saint Luke’s Hospitalof Kansas CityRobert Wood JohnsonUniversity HospitalOutside Higher Education BenchmarksNature of benchmark activitySustainable architectural designElectronic dashboard, senior leader performanceevaluationCustomer service “front counter”approachesEmployee interview/screening,new employee orientationExperience engineering for Thunderduck Hall andnew buildingsEmployee cultureSupplier/partner scorecardEmployee professional developmentDiversity in managementEmployee retention/turnover/satisfactionEmployee retention/turnoverFIGURE 1IntegrationDisseminateresults.7LearningEvaluatetheprocess.8Measureimpact.6Process ImplementationAnd Improvement PlanDeploymentIdentifyimprovementneed.1EvaluationandimprovementapproachImplement/pilotapproach.5Assignownership.2Developsolution.4Identifyrootcause.3Approachtheir talents and abilities, as evidenced by the 22former Richland employees who have gone on tobecome college presidents elsewhere.”One of seven two-year community colleges inthe Dallas County Community College District,Richland enrolls about 14,500 for-credit and almost6,000 continuing education students each semester.It serves an area with not only a rapidly growingpopulation typical of large Sunbelt cities but alsochanging demographics, including an influx ofthose for whom English is not a first language.Richland’s key student segment is one whoseprimary goal is eventual transfer to a four-yearuniversity, but its student body ranges from adolescentsin its math, science and engineering programfor high school students to senior citizenstaking continuing education courses.Richland’s mascot is R. Mobius Thunderduck(“Moby Duck”). The Thunderduck culture reflectsRichland’s agrarian beginnings and permeates studentand employee life, supporting the creation oflifelong learners, community builders and globalcitizens.Meeting ChallengesRichland addresses challenges directly throughits strategic planning approach. In addition to populationdemographic changes, the strategic challengesinclude:48 IJUNE 2006 Iwww.asq.org
BALDRIGE CEREMONY: Stephen K. Mittelstet,Richland College president, and Kathryn Eggleston,vice president for institutional effectiveness andeconomic development, receive the Malcolm BaldrigeNational Quality Award from Vice President DickCheney at an April ceremony in Washington, DC.•Technology jobs decreasing in the employerbase, with students shifting to courses thatwill transfer to four-year colleges.• Less prepared students and fewer resources inK-12 institutions. 3• Increasing faculty and leadership retirements.•A need to minimize disruptions as facilitiesare built to expand capacity.•A need to closing enrollment and student successgaps, particularly for Latino populationsand students.Richland’s use of benchmarking has been somewhatunique. While the activity includes examiningresults from surveys of students and employees andcomparative data from other schools, it also looksclosely at financial comparative performance ratingsand data from a pretty impressive group of for-profitsthat includes previous Baldrige recipients (seeTable 1).Strategic and operational deployment of its plando-study-actcycle—refined to what it calls anapproach-deployment-learning-integration cycle—is embedded in Richland’s process implementationand improvement plan (see Figure 1).Organizational learning is also embedded inRichland’s culture, consistent with its passion forcontinuous learning and knowledge asset sharing.Enter the Baldrige CriteriaWhile those associated with Richland knew it wasa quality organization, it didn’t have a systemic,comprehensive way to demonstrate it until about 10years ago when it began its Baldrige journey. Priorto that, staff had worked with total quality managementand management by objective, but these andother approaches didn’t seem to have a sustainedimpact on Richland’s organizational performance,according to Eggleston.“Metrics to demonstrate our achievements werenot clearly defined and systematically tracked withclear targets and action plans,” she explains.Richland leadership knew that, as a nonprofit,the school had to become more efficient, effectivePhoto by Arnie Sachs, Consolidated News Photosand entrepreneurial. External support at the statelevel was consistently decreasing—from 70% threelegislative sessions ago to the current 30%.To reach its goal of excellence, leadership decidedit needed to adopt the seven Baldrige categoriesof criteria:1. Leadership.2. Strategic planning.3. Student, stakeholder and market focus.4. Information and analysis.5. Faculty and staff focus.6. Process management.7. Organizational performance results.LeadershipWhile the president’s and founders’ many yearsof service have been important, Richland’s entiresenior leadership team (called the ThunderTeam)and philosophy of empowering employees haveplayed a key role in Richland’s Baldrige award.Employee empowerment deploys the Carver principleof “freeing those closest to the work to makeresponsible decisions.” 4 This allows employees toanalyze information, determine course correctionsand quickly respond to change in the environmentthrough formal and informal decision making.The president’s cabinet consists of the ThunderTeamplus the president’s direct reports, key deans anddirectors from vice presidential councils, and presidentsof the student government and professionalstaff support associations and faculty council.The cabinet formally reviews how effectivelywritten policies and procedures provide balancedfreedom and parameters to employees, sharpeningorganizational and employee clarity and minimizingredundancy.QUALITY PROGRESS IJUNE 2006 I 49
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Page 5 and 6: GRADUATION DAY: Richland College gr
Page 7 and 8: RICHLAND’S PRESIDENT: Stephen K.

Richland College - Quality Texas

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