A Message to School Executives
Colleges, public schools and businesses all face challenges in their performance improvement efforts to become more competitive and maintain a leadership position in a global economy. The Quest for Quality project links workforce education and other administrators with systemic ways to make real institutional improvements. The Dallas County Community College District and The Bill Priest Institute are ready to share their experiences in meeting these challenges in workforce education through helping other schools identify their organizational strengths and target opportunities for improvement. Your learning starts when you commit to a self assessment through employing the Texas Award for Performance Excellence or Baldrige in Education Criteria for Performance Excellence.

Why Should You Self-Assess?

• The assessment is tailored to your school's organization and its successes, driven by our own strategy and action plans and your focus on educational outcomes, students and other stakeholders - the critical success factors for our organization. The assessment criteria provide a framework for performance excellence.
• The self-assessment will help you measure performance on a wide range of key operational indicators such as:
  • Students/stakeholders
  • Educational services and outcomes
  • Planning and leadership
  • Finances
• Process and results affecting key stakeholders, including students and to target key opportunities for improvement that go well beyond accreditation findings, and focus on continuous and breakthrough improvement.
• Self-assessment allows you to identify organizational strengths and to target key opportunities for improving that go well beyond accreditation findings, and focus on continuous and breakthrough improvement
• Organizational communication and performance will improve with resources aligned to achieve organizational goals.

About the Quest for Quality Program
This program has two phases consisting of:

Phase One:

Understanding the Baldrige in Education and the Texas Award programs through an analysis of the criteria used in educational case studies.  Two-day workshops in Dallas, Austin and Houston will be offered for this Phase One activity.

Phase Two:

Participants and their institutions design an introductory self-assessment tailored to their Workforce Education program and their institution. This process will be facilitated by linking with Baldrige and Texas Award experts through a web-based Virtual Network provided by the Bill Priest Institute.

Phase Three:

Participants will share their model assessments with other participating institutions to learn from each other and make refinements.  These models will be accessed through the Quest For Quality 2000 website.

Connect with the Quest for Quality Program
This project is sponsored by the Bill Priest Institute for Economic Development of the Dallas County Community College District and the DCCCD Office of Planning and Development. It is funded for 1999-2000 by a grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

The program will be lead by Burt Peachy, President of Burt Peachy and Associates, a consulting firm specializing in organizational transformation and continuous improvement principles.  DCCCD administrators trained in the Baldrige and Texas Award program's criteria will assist, so colleges will have access to recent and relevant information on facing challenges of the Educational marketplace.

Participants attend a two-day workshop to receive orientation to the criteria. Following the workshops, participants will be supported through an interactive system, accessed through a computer, while they begin to measure and document quality improvement.

Workshop Dates and Locations
Dates and locations for this year's workshops are:

The workshops begin at 8:30 a.m. and conclude at 4:30 p.m.

For More Information or to Register as a Participant
There is no cost for participating in the Quest for Quality program.  Individual colleges are responsible for all travel and lodging expenses to the two-day workshops, and expenses incurred in conducting surveys and campus-based activities.

To register or obtain additional information contact the project's Grant Manager, Bob Arnold at The Bill Priest Institute.
Phone:  214-860-5752
Fax:  214-860-5815
E-Mail:  rla9748@dcccd.edu

Educational opportunities are offered by the Dallas County Community College District without regard to race, color, age, national origin, religion, sex, or disability.