Press Contact:
Christel Henke
414-332-2933
chenke@hansondodge.com

For Immediate Release

ASQ Names Higher Ed Team Excellence Award Finalists

Milwaukee, Wis., September 23, 2008 — The American Society for Quality (ASQ) has selected two higher education finalists for its Education Team Excellence Award at the 16th Annual National Quality Education Conference (NQEC) in Reno, Nev., November 16–18, 2008. The finalists will showcase the nation’s most outstanding educational improvement efforts:

• Metro Technology Centers, Oklahoma City, Okla., a career and technology education district that offers career programs to high school students, adults and business and industry, was chosen as a finalist based on its use of process improvement in financial aid staffing and training resulting in a 35 percent increase in adults receiving financial aid and a significant decrease in financial aid processing time.
• Alliance Business Academy, Bangalore, Karnataka, India, a business school that offers programs in management and information technology, was chosen as a finalist based on its use of continuous improvement tools during a six-year period to improve its B-school rankings to become one of the top 10 private business schools in India.

The Education Team Excellence Award provides educators with the opportunity to benchmark their team’s efforts against other schools’ best practices, and capture national and international recognition for the winning schools’ team-based quality improvement efforts. Each finalist team will present its project live during NQEC, and all entrants will be recognized for their participation. The highest scoring teams will receive Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards. Scoring will be conducted by a team of judges from across the country.

“In addition to providing educators with a prime opportunity to spotlight performance excellence and strengthen stakeholder relationships, this Award also offers a means to generate additional learning from an outside quality champion,” said ASQ President Roberto Saco.

NQEC is the nation’s leading conference for teachers, administrators and support personnel to learn about the use of quality tools and concepts that can be applied to improve U.S. schools. It is an outstanding opportunity for educators seeking awareness, commitment, refinement and measurable progress in applying continuous improvement approaches and processes. In addition to numerous special sessions for K-12, it is also a venue for educators and administrators to interact with their peers from school districts across the country and around the world. For more information, visit http://nqec.asq.org/index.html.

 

The American Society for Quality, www.asq.org, has been the world’s leading authority on quality for more than 60 years. With more than 90,000 individual and organizational members, the professional association advances learning, quality improvement and knowledge exchange to improve business results, and to create better workplaces and communities worldwide. As champion of the quality movement, ASQ offers technologies, concepts, tools and training to quality professionals, quality practitioners and everyday consumers, encouraging all to Make Good Great®. ASQ has been the sole administrator of the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award since 1991. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wis., ASQ is a founding partner of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a prominent quarterly economic indicator, and also produces the Quarterly Quality Report.