Education
Loyola, Baldrige, and Six Sigma: An MBA Program Designed with Today’s Business in Mind
Loyola University has just announced that their Fall 2013 MBA curriculum will not only follow the Baldrige criteria framework, but also incorporates Six Sigma training and certification. Through partnership with the American Society for Quality (ASQ), Loyola students will have the opportunity to work on real performance improvement projects and project management certifications.
“Six Sigma is a quality improvement methodology that is used by most of the top companies in the country for controlling variation and reducing costs. It’s a highly prized, internationally recognized standard,” said Jerry Goolsby, Ph.D., M.B.A., director of graduate programs for the College of Business.
According to a press release from the University, recent Loyola MBA grads have gone on to work in advanced professional positions at companies like General Electric, General Motors, Symetra, and Shell.
Loyola has been incorporating the Baldrige criteria into their curriculum for the past few years, but have been fine-tuning the coursework along the way. To expose students to the realities of the corporate world, the school offers an Executive Mentor Program for MBA students, which matches a small group of students to a successful area business executive. Shadowing business trips, discussing time management, personal finance, goal setting, and communication skills, as well as networking with the local business community are just some of the benefits students can absorb from this program.
In addition to the expansion of …
6Feb2013 | Joseph A. De Feo | 1 comment | Continued
Post University Honors Malcolm Baldrige
SOURCE: Post University
Post University honored former Waterbury business leader and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige at an event at Waterbury City Hall on Wednesday, October 17th. The event celebrated the naming of The Malcolm Baldrige School of Business at Post University. More than 100 guests honored “Mac,” including his daughter Molly Baldrige. An oil painting of the honoree, which will hang in Post University’s Traurig Library, was unveiled.
Dr. Thomas Samph, President and CEO of Post University had this to say on Wednesday evening: “We are deeply honored that the Baldrige family has have granted us permission to extend Malcolm Baldrige’s legacy in this way. Like Baldrige’s impact on the international business community, the reach of our ideas and commitment to business excellence extends far beyond our Waterbury campus to nearly every corner of the world. And similar to the way Baldrige changed the way people think about business, we want to change the way people think about higher education. It’s something we are very passionate about because we know our future, the future of Waterbury and the future of our nation as a whole depends on a steadfast commitment to innovation, continuous improvement, quality and ethical leadership.”
Dr. Don Mroz, Provost of Post University and Dean of The Malcolm Baldrige School of Business was also very enthusiastic about the opportunities and responsibilities that lay ahead: “As someone …
25Oct2012 | Joseph A. De Feo | 0 comments | ContinuedBaldrige in Education: A Healthy Mix
The education system in this country needs overhauling. Tuition rates are skyrocketing and textbook costs continue on the rise, but are curricula being modified as rapidly as they need to be? Specifically, MBAs: to accurately reflect the needs of the ever-changing business world, are business schools keeping up? Well, as it turns out, some are.
Post University in Waterbury, CT recently announced the renaming of their business school to The Malcolm Baldrige School of Business, in a culmination of “a great deal of effort in identifying someone whose legacy embodies the quality, goal, and mission of our school. We knew there was no better name to attach to our School of Business than Malcolm Baldrige,” a Post University blog reads. Post is right down the road from our headquarters in Southbury, CT, with Mac’s hometown of Woodbury being sandwiched between the two towns. Waterbury, of course, is home to the Scovill plant where Baldrige spent his early career, leading the transformation of a struggling brass mill into a highly diversified manufacturer of consumer housing and industrial goods. To honor those principles, Post has implemented a number of new courses that clearly draw directly from the criteria that frame the award as we know it today. For example:
- BUS505: Organizational Innovation and Creativity covers how to create and innovate in an organization, and why you should always challenge
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Education Needs Baldrige
Based on results, the most effective way to ensure that no child is left behind would be to mandate integrating the Baldrige model at every public school system. Increase school funding to support the initiative, say one full-time person for every 10,000 students in a district, and you would get exponentially better achievement, satisfaction, and cost control. As an example, for my city’s school district, spending $50,000 on a Baldrige leader, out of a total budget of more than $30 million, would offer a huge return on investment.
Two Baldrige Award-winning districts prove my point. Jenks Public Schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma, received the Baldrige Award in 2005. It has continued to use the Baldrige model to pursue excellence. According to the Jenks Gazette, “the 2011 graduates of Jenks High School had an average composite (ACT) score of 23.9, which is far above both state and national averages of 20.7 and 21.2, respectively. The composite ACT score for graduating students at JHS has increased every year for the past five years,” or since it won the Baldrige Award. Dr. Kirby Lehman, superintendent of Jenks Public Schools, noted that “these scores are even more impressive when considering over 80% of all graduates at Jenks took the exam, compared to the national average of 49%.”
Eight of out ten Jenks students are taking the ACT, compared to the national average of just …
22Sep2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBaldrige and the Assault on Our Schools
The effort to weaken teachers’ unions in Wisconsin, which was supposedly about balancing a budget until the bill that passed limited collective bargaining without doing a thing to cut costs, raises a bigger question for all American schools that is not going to go away: Why should we spend more money on education when the money we’ve been spending is not producing results?
According to the Broad Foundation, a national entrepreneurial philanthropy dedicated to transforming urban public education, 68% of American 8th graders can’t read at grade level (and most will never catch up) and 1.2 million students drop out of high school every year. American students rank 25th in math and 21st in science compared to students in 30 industrialized countries. The national high school graduation rate is 70%.
Some argue that the problem is that we have not been spending enough on education. World-class school systems in other countries spend more on teacher salaries and provide more time for staff development than most systems in the U.S., and they produce better results (i.e., Korea, Finland, Singapore, China, New Zealand, Netherlands, and others). I just read that teachers in Singapore are paid more than doctors and lawyers.
That’s not going to happen in this country. Most people think we’re already spending too much on education, especially for the results we’re getting. For American schools to succeed, …
14Mar2011 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedWhat Are the Qualities of an Educated Person?
One of the Baldrige Criteria’s core values is a focus on results. If you look at the results of colleges and K-12 school districts that have won the Baldrige Award, you will find impressive results in graduation rates and improvements in core subject areas such as reading and math, but you will find scant evidence that our schools and colleges are producing educated students.
What are the qualities of an educated person? Certainly, proficiency in math and science and the ability to comprehend what you are reading are important qualities, but these are the basics. If you have these qualities and nothing else—and there is ample evidence that too many Americans lack even this minimum knowledge—you could not pass as an educated person.
I agree with Seth Godin, who said “we need to teach students how to think critically, solve problems, work together, and be creative.” To me, those are the qualities of an educated person, especially in the 21st century. You only have to look at the percentage of people in this country who deny global warming and evolution and support Sarah Palin to witness our national deficiency of critical thinking.
I know from experience that teaching critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, and creativity are almost nonexistent at most high schools. I hoped the situation improved in college. It turns out that it doesn’t.
New York University sociologist …
19Jan2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedWhat Makes a School Successful?
This week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released the 2009 results for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The Executive Summary, available here, begins with a table that compares the performance of countries and economies in the study. Eight countries and three economies were statistically significantly above the OECD average in reading, math, and science: Shanghai-China, Korea, Finland, Hong Kong-China, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands, and Belgium. The United States scored average in reading and science and below average in math.
The Executive Summary is one of several documents available at the OECD site that interpret the data. As the husband of a high-school librarian and a participant in regular dinner-table discussions about education and how to improve it, I was struck by a few points in the OECD’s analysis:
- “In all countries, students who enjoy reading the most perform significantly better than students who enjoy reading the least. Practicing reading by reading for enjoyment is most closely associated with better outcomes when it is accompanied by high levels of critical thinking and strategic learning.” My wife has long preached reading for enjoyment, but that’s just one part of this equation. I would argue that very few American schools help their students achieve high levels of critical thinking, as evidenced by how easily millions of people are manipulated by the lies and distortions of
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