Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Quality Award


As most of you know, I work at New York Chiropractic College. I work in the Office of Institutional Quality and Assessment (long title, I know). Basically, we're quality, which means we're responsible for a lot of stuff at this school. I work with accreditation for our various programs. I administer and then analyze a bunch of surveys. I keep track of board scores. Etc etc.

Recently, NYCC applied for a Malcolm Baldrige Award, and that effort was spear-headed by my office.
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards are regarded as the “gold standard” of quality awards and named after Malcolm Baldrige, 26th Secretary of Commerce. They are bestowed through a program managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to promote excellence in organizational performance, recognize the achievements and results of U.S. organizations, and to publicize successful performance strategies.


Since 2001, only seven educational institutions have received the Baldrige Award – none in the area of natural healthcare education (which is what we are). And of the seven education winners, only three were higher education.


Basically, it's the most prestigious quality award you can win, and if you do win, there's a fancy-smancy ceremony in Washington D.C. and the President himself gives the recipient the award. So yeah, this is a big deal.

So you're probably thinking... "wow, they won one?" Alas, no. At least, not yet. We were awarded what's called a 'site visit', which means that certified Baldrige examiners come to our campus and verify what we wrote in our 50-page application. It’s still quite prestigious, since over 70+ companies applied for the Baldrige award this year, and only 15 were awarded a site visit… and out of those 15, only one education institution was awarded a site visit. Us. Stinking cool, huh?


They started their visit yesterday, and they’ll be here through Wednesday. It’s been so cool to watch the process (I’m a nerd, what can I say?) Still… it’s been a hecka lot of work. Hecka lot. I’m going to be so glad when they go away and even happier when it’s the weekend. We won’t find out til November if we won the award or not… but win or not, I already feel very proud of NYCC. This is one very good institution.



5 comments:

Andrea said...

Oh that is awesome! I feel bad you're doing so much work though on top of being pukey sick and sinus infections! Make sure you take some naps this weekend and watch lots of football. :) We aren't moved in quite yet- much to my chagrin, but we'll get there. At least we have a certificate of occupancy. Keep up the hard work over there! Way to go!

Melvin and Carly said...

Sounds very prestigious indeed! Congrats on making the short list. Hope the visit goes well and the powers-that-be like what they see.

Scott and Becky said...

Congrats to your school. That is way cool. Good luck

madjohnbo said...
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Nathan and Lisa said...

Hey Sarah! I didn't know you were expecting!!! Congratulations!!! I hope you have a girl! :) I thought we were having a boy, but was very happily surprised when we found out it was a girl! Hope you're feeling good!