Members

Employees and students at Cowley may not realize how they have benefited in many ways since the fallof 1995, when the Quality Initiative program was implemented.Twelve Quality Initiative teams involving 40 staff members have been generating ideas to improve theway the college conducts its business. The purpose of the program is to get people involved in the schooland to identify a problem and submit solutions.At a half-day inservice Aug. 16,1996, two teams received $1,000 President's Awards and three received$500 awards for their work on specific projects.One award-winning team studied the many possibilities of using multi-media instruction in delivering andlearning lessons. The team of Technology Applications to the Classroom consisted of Rex Soule, RichardTredway, Bart Allen, and Bruce Crouse. The team worked toward two goals:1) develop equipment needs;and 2) design processes to pilot multi-media instruction applications for instructional delivery."We looked at three classrooms to set up multi-media instruction," said Soule, director of Cowley's computergraphix technology program. "These rooms would have all the equipment for teachers to deliverinstructions to students instead of just a lecture."Emergency situations were the focus of the other President's Award winner, the Workplace Violence team,who worked to ensure that the situations will be handled correctly. The team was made up of Tony Crouch,June Bland, Elvin Hatfield, Bryan McChesney, and Bud Shelton.Teams receiving monetary awards were able to decide how best to spend the money. However, it must bespent on something related to the project. Each member of the five teams also received a "TEAMWORK"wall plaque.Employees may have a chance to continue education opportunities in the areas of personal development,career enhancement and technical training because of the proposed plan of the Professional StaffDevelopment team. Team members are Jody Arnett,Bev Black, JoLynne Oleson, Stu Osterthun, PeggyPaton, Wanda Shepherd, and Janice Stover. This team, along with two others, received $500 QualityLeadership awards.The two other $500 winners were the Campus-Wide Fiber Optic Connection team and the StudentTracking team. Fiber optic team members are Gary Detwiler, Charles McKown, Sid Regnier, and MikeCrow. Student Tracking team members are Bev Black, Stover, Terri Morrow, Forest Smith, Linda Strack,Crouse, Charlie White, and Maggie Picking.Each team submitted a proposal which would make a difference in each or allof the following criteria:improve the quality of work and/or educational environment, enhance customer service, maintain continuityor longevity of improvement, and help meet the institutional mission."Each team sets certain goals that follow the list of criteria and work toward accomplishing them," saidQuality Improvement Processes instructor Wayne Short.Proposals were accepted for the next Quality Initiative program until December 1996 and the QualityCouncil, comprised of administrators, faculty and staff, hoped to wrap it up in the spring of 1997. However,many projects will be on-going.The other seven teams participating in the project: Kids at Cowley, TQM Tools for the Natural Sciences,South Central Kansas Mathematics and Technology Conference, Social Science Child Care, FacilitiesScheduling Process Improvement, Non-traditional Student Recruitment, and Role of ComputerizedAssessment in Outcomes.P