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Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Ceremony Remarks by
Joe F. Alexander Vice President Cheney, Secretary Gutierrez, members of the Baldrige family, fellow award recipients, and honored guests: It is a privilege to accept this award on behalf of the Monfort College’s faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends. We are here because of their continued commitment to performance excellence and investment in the approach of viewing yesterday’s performance as an opportunity for a better tomorrow. Our Baldrige journey began in 1984 when Deans Bill Duff, Bob Lynch, and our employees began working toward a shared vision of becoming Colorado’s best undergraduate business program. In what we now refer to as our “road less traveled,” the College chose to eliminate all graduate programs and focus 100 percent of its resources on building quality within a single undergraduate business degree—not exactly the typical strategy for U.S. business schools which generally make their mark in the M.B.A. arena. While many of our peers measure success by business school rankings, we decided to instead focus on quality by selecting metrics such as student learning, faculty and student satisfaction, placement rates, and employer satisfaction—quantifiable, benchmarked results that would speak for themselves. And now, here we are, farther along in our journey but by no means at its end. We are enjoying the scenic view of this wonderful award while also cognizant of the roadmap in our laps outlining 41 opportunities for improvement, compliments of our site visit team. Congratulations to our colleagues at Bama, Robert Wood Johnson, and Texas Nameplate. Each of you clearly represents excellence in your respective industries and we are learning from you along with the rest of the country. It has truly been a privilege getting to work with all of you over the past few months. We are grateful to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the entire Baldrige organization, and Colorado Performance Excellence for creating and supporting a framework that both inspires and equips organizations like ours to be the best they can be. Most of all, I want to thank our Monfort College of Business employees, our University of Northern Colorado colleagues, and the Monfort family. Their unwavering commitment to performance excellence improvement and to preparing the next generation of business leaders makes “Building Business Excellence” so much more than just a slogan. I am proud to work with each of you. Thank you again for this wonderful
honor.
created on 7/21/05
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