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RICHLAND COLLEGE ACCEPTS 2005 MALCOLM BALDRIGE NATIONAL QUALITY AWARD
Richland College, the first community college in the United States to receive the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, accepted the nation’s highest presidential honor for quality and organizational excellence on April 19 at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.
A delegation of 50 faculty, staff, administrators and students from Richland as well as chamber of commerce leaders traveled to Washington to participate in the ceremony sponsored by the White House and the U.S. Dept. of Commerce.
Dr. Stephen K. Mittelstet, Richland College president, accepted the award from Vice President Dick Cheney at the ceremony.
“This presidential recognition honors Richland College’s serious commitment to and passion for student learning success and our vital mission of teaching, learning and building sustainable local and world community,” Dr. Mittelstet said. “We are grateful to arrive at this important milestone in our ongoing quality journey, as today we celebrate together the quality success of which the businesses, educational institutions, and health care organizations in our nations are so capable.”
At Richland College on April 19, the faculty and staff celebrated with a collegewide luncheon and viewing of the Baldrige award ceremony via live satellite downlink.
Richland College, one of seven institutions in the Dallas County Community College District, is one of six national recipients of the 2005 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Other recipients are Park Place Lexus in Plano; Sunny Fresh Foods Inc. of Monticello, Minn.; DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations of New Orleans, La.; Jenks Public Schools of Jenks, Okla.; and Bronson Methodist Hospital of Kalamazoo, Mich.
The six recipients for the 2005 award were selected from among 64 applicants. All six recipients were evaluated vigorously by an independent board of examiners in seven areas: leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; human resource focus; and process management. The evaluation process included approximately 1,000 hours of review and an on-site visit by teams of examiners to clarify questions and verify information submitted on the applications.
The Baldrige examiners prepare a feedback report for each applicant. Some of Richland’s strengths are:
* Richland’s leadership system, which allows for broad representation and input from faculty, staff, students, community members and other key stakeholders
* Processes in place that support a culture that engages participation among students, faculty, staff and community members, such as Richland’s monthly departmental performance reviews
* Richland’s commitment to serve an ethnically diverse student population
* Richland’s ability to be agile by supporting and developing a strong cadre of adjunct faculty members
* Effective use of resources in response to a reduction in state funding
“Richland College has used the Malcolm Baldrige criteria for performance excellence during the past nine years as a framework that guided us through continuous performance improvement,” Dr. Mittelstet said. “We will continue to maintain those standards of excellence both now and in the future.”
Richland College has cultivated a history of pursuing organizational excellence. The college previously received the 2005 Texas Award for Performance Excellence from the governor’s office and the Quality Texas Foundation; was named a Best Practices Vanguard College by the League for Innovation in the Community College in 2000; was one of seven mentoring colleges for the American Association of Community Colleges’ national Service Learning Project from 1998 to 2003; served as one of eight pilot institutions for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ new accreditation standards; and received the American Library Association’s 2001 Library of the Future Award and the 2004 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award.
For more information about Richland College, visit www.richlandcollege.edu. To view Richland’s application for the 2005 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, go to www.richlandcollege.edu and click on the Baldrige logo in the upper right-hand corner of the homepage (PDF file).

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For more than 30 years, Richland College of the Dallas County Community College District has focused on teaching, learning and community building. In recognition of these efforts, the White House and the Dept. of Commerce named Richland a 2005 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the only community college to have received this award. Richland helps students build their future through courses that can be applied to the first two years of a baccalaureate degree, one- or two-year certificates in a number of career fields, and training in the latest technology for students who want to advance in their current careers. The student body of more than 14,000 college credit students and about 5,000 continuing education students at Richland is internationally and ethnically diverse, speaking more than 79 first languages. Visit www.richlandcollege.edu for more information.