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2005 Oklahoma Quality Award logo        

UCO RECEIVES ‘QUALITY’ DESIGNATION

    Nearly two years ago, faculty, staff and administrators at the University of Central Oklahoma decided it was time to take a close look in the mirror and try to determine whether or not the university was on a path to quality excellence.

    It was a risky decision, but one that is now paying dividends for the UCO community.

    UCO recently received the Oklahoma Quality Award Foundation Commitment Award, making it the only four-year institution to have received this distinction.

    The Oklahoma Quality Award Foundation was founded in 1993 to provide Oklahoma businesses and organizations with a process for measuring and sustaining growth, and economic and service excellence.

    Last fall, 120 UCO faculty, staff and members of the administration initiated a campus-wide assessment looking for strengths and opportunities for improvement in the areas of leadership, strategic planning, students/stakeholders, measurement and analysis, faculty and staff, and process management.

    Action teams were assigned to each category and began working on finding ways to improve in each of these areas.

    “We realized early on that the most important aspect of applying for this award was to obtain feedback from impartial, external reviewers,” said UCO Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Bill Radke.

    Radke said the participation not only by UCO’s administration, but also of faculty and staff in the process, has proven to be the key to success.

    “It is a credit to our faculty and staff that UCO is able to initiate a continuous improvement process with such widespread support from across our campus community.”  

    Many of the action teams have submitted final recommendations and others continue to meet and will submit recommendations soon.

    “The next step is to implement the recommendations from the action teams,” Radke said. “This whole process has proven that you don’t have to be bad to improve, and at UCO, we are improving every day.”

For More Information:

Governor's Press Release Naming 2005 Quality Award Recipients (Acrobat PDF)

The Oklahoma Quality Award Foundation

View the UCO Quality Award Application page

UCO Continuous Quality Improvement home page