Division Leadership
Chair
Scott Martens
marte023@umn.edu
Since June 2004, Scott has served as director - Office of Service & Continuous Improvement at University of Minnesota. In this position, Scott is leading the financial, operational and cultural transformation of the University of Minnesota in direct support of strategic positioning efforts. Since 2000 he has also been a senior lecturer for the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management in both the operations and accounting departments teaching MBA and undergraduate courses in operations, quality management and managerial accounting.
Prior to joining the University of Minnesota, Scott held leadership positions at American Express, Ceridian and General Electric. As senior program director - business transformation at American Express, he led the deployment of six sigma for the financial advisor organization. While at GE serving as a black belt, Scott provided green belt training and worked numerous six sigma projects in sales, operations and finance for U. S. and international units. Scott earned an MS-management with distinction from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA and a BBA-accounting with honors from Iowa State University in Ames, IA. Scott is both a CPA and CPL, certified professional logistician.
Chair-Elect and Acting Higher Education Vice Chair
Cindy Veenstra
cpveenst@umich.edu
Dr. Cindy Veenstra is principal consultant for Veenstra and Associates. Prior to this position, she was a quality systems consultant and held quality management positions at Motorola. Dr. Veenstra earned her Ph.D. in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan with a research focus on modeling freshman retention in 2008. She is a past chair of both the Ann Arbor and Phoenix Sections and a past vice chair in the Education Division for both K-12 and higher education. In the past year, she led the division's effort to publish the special issue of the Journal for Quality and Participation on quality in education and the special issue of ASQ's Higher Education Brief on engineering K-12 outreach. She is an ASQ Fellow and Certified Reliability Engineer. She recently completed her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering at the University of Michigan with a research focus on the modeling of engineering student success and strategies for continuous improvement in education processes.
Cindy currently serves as the advising editor for ASQ's Higher Education Brief. She has published in ASQ's Journal for Quality and Participation, the Journal of Quality Engineering Education, the ASQ Higher Education Brief, and has a regular column on engineering education in the QED, the division's newsletter. She also discusses college student retention topics in her blog, Veenstra's Views (www.veenstraconsulting.com/blog).
International Activities Vice-Chair
Fernando F. Padro
fpdro@msn.com
Dr. Fernando Padro is an associate professor at Cambridge College in Education Leadership. He specilaizes in quality assurance through accreditation and audit processes and has authored several papers on global accreditation issues. With a dissertation on the presence of quality circles in educational systems, he has conducted research in this area for more than 25 years. He has made numerous presentations in Europe and Australia about key issues on implementing quality initiatives at colleges and universities from the points of view of faculty participation and organizational response to meeting external expectations. He has been a Baldrige Examiner for four years and has served as a Peer Reviewer for The Higher Learning Commission's Project AQIP. He is on the editorial board of TQM Magazine and has been elected Faculty Fellow for the NASPA. He is a senor member of ASQ and chairs the Higher Education Advisory Committee. Dr. Padro has published articles in ASQ's Journal for Quality and Participation and the ASQ Higher Education Brief.
Workforce Development Vice-Chair and Voice of the Customer Chair
Deborah Hopen
debhopen@nventure.com
Deborah Hopen has over 30 years of experience in total quality management. She has served as a senior executive with experience in general management, quality assurance and quality control, training, human resources, organization development, research and development, process engineering, and accounting. She has been president and chairman of the American Society for Quality and currently is the editor of ASQ's Journal for Quality and Participation and contributing editor of ASQ's Six Sigma Forum magazine.
K-12 Vice-Chair
Rossi Wittlinger
mailto:rossianwitt@netscape.net
Rossi Wittlinger is managing director for Hawk Solutions, providing innovative business solutions for schools, universities, healthcare, government, and nonprofit organizations. She has seventeen years of process and product accomplishments in business management, system engineering, ISO 9001, 14001, lean and six sigma methods and techniques. Her experience includes developing, managing, and coordinating various projects, teams and financial improvements. She had managed and audited organizational quality and process procedures, provided systems training from CEO and VPs to hourly employees, managed ISO 9000-9001; 14001 quality management systems, FDA and FAA requirements.
Rossi has served as president of the Institute for Industrial Engineers (IIE) Milwaukee (2001-2006), board member for ASQ Milwaukee Chapter Advance Programs (2006-2008) and the ASQ Milwaukee Section co-chair K-12 Education (since 2006). She has served as the ASQ Education Division's co-vice chair of K-12 Education (2008-2009).
QED (Division Newsletter) Editor
John Dew
(205) 348-9831
jdew@aalan.ua.edu
Dr. John Dew is currently associate vice chancellor for Troy University in Alabama, where he is responsible for accreditation efforts, institutional research, quality improvement, strategic planning, and will be the university's representative to the Alabama Commission on Higher Education. He also teaches three online courses in the University of Alabama's Master's degree in Consumer Quality Management. He is past chair of the Education Division and an ASQ Fellow. He has published articles in ASQ's Quality Progress, ASQ's Journal for Quality and Participation, the ASQ Higher Education Brief, and the division's newsletter.
Membership Chair
Open Position
Treasurer
Phil Schmidt
hawksolutions@execpc.com
Phil Schmidt is managing director of Hawk Solutions--an innovative organization providing organizational growth solutions for schools, universities, healthcare, manufacturing, government, and nonprofit organizations. He is an ASQ senior member and has been active in ASQ since 1984. For the past six years, he has been the quality in education chair or co-chair for the Milwaukee Section and active as a volunteer business partner/consultant with K-12 schools and districts in southeast Wisconsin. Besides being the treasurer for the Education Division, he is actively involved with ASQ's ETI initiative and is on the team working on ASQ's national policy initiative for K-12 education. He previouosly served as the division's co-vice chair for K-12 Education and as a member of the ASQ K-12 Education Advisory Committee. He is certified as an ASQ Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence, Quality Engineer and Quality Auditor.
Secretary
Robin Roth
robinroth@comcast.net
Dr. Robin Roth is an entrepreneur, running her own real estate training, coaching, and consulting business through http://www.RobinTaylorRothEnterprises.com. A long-time instructional designer and trainer, Robin has managed the training activities for real estate agents, brokers and managers for Century 21 Real Estate LLC and for Century 21 Canada LP, and was twice nominated for "Manager of the Year, " by her team members. Robin is a Certified Centra Professional Trainer, a Certified Manager of Quality & Organizational Effectiveness, and a real estate professional with CENTURY 21 Moretti Reality in South Plainfield, NJ. Robin has served on the Education Division board for the past seven years, including six years as an officer of the division.
Standards Representative
F. Craig Johnson
fcjohnson@fsu.edu
Dr. Craig Johnson is a fellow of the American Society for Quality and the chair of the ASQ Standards Committee. Craig heads the US delegation to the International Standards Organization's Technical Committee 176 for Quality management and quality assurance (Subcommittee 1 on concepts and terminology). He is co-convener of the ISO TC 176 Study Group on education. He is the second recipient of the American National Standards Group's Honorary Lifetime Membership Award for his "outstanding professional achievements on behalf of our nation's international standards activities."
Division Immediate Past Chair
Geri Markley
(586) 419-8235
mquality@cleary.edu
Geri Markley is executive director of the Michigan Quality Council, the state version of the Baldrige Quality Award. She is also chair of the Quality and Project Management programs at Cleary University in Ann Arbor. Geri is a long-time Baldrige Senior and Alumni Examiner and is a System Appraiser for AQIP, the continuous improvement model for North Central Accreditation for higher education. Geri spent two years in k-12 implementing continuous improvement and many years before that in service industries designing and continuous improvement approaches. Geri is co-editor of Transformation to Performance Excellence: Baldrige Education Leaders Speak Out.
