[The following interview appears in the March, 1994 edition of _TQM_in_Higher_Education_, pages 1 to 3.] MAKING THE JOURNEY TOWARD A "CULTURE OF QUALITY" Ed. note: Dean Hubbard has been president of Northwest Missouri State U. since 1984. Prior to NMSU, he served as president of Union College (NE). Under Hubbard's leadership, NMSU has received national attention for its "Culture of Quality" plan to improve the quality of undergraduate educa- tion. Hubbard is internationally recognized for his work in TQM and is a member of the Board of Examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. He chairs the Academic Quality Consortium and is also a member of the American Society for Quality Control. TQM/HE: How did you get started in TQM and how did you begin applying it to your institutions? Hubbard: My doctorate at Stanford U. was in administration and policy analysis. The program focused on the sociology of large group behavior. I remember the opening night when they brought all the students together and said: "If you're looking for courses in personnel management and those sorts of things ..., you've come to the wrong place. We're not interested in teaching you other people's rules; we're interested in teaching you what makes large groups function effectively when they're assigned a common goal. Then you should be able to write your own rules." In 1980, my wife was managing a mail order business with 88 employees. She invited Jose Torres from Honeywell to talk to her managers about how Honeywell managed quality. I went over out of curiosity. Torres essentially talked about Phil Crosby's approach. I was very intrigued about the possibilities in education, so I asked him to do a workshop for my administrative team at Union and he agreed. During the work- shop, Torres would present a concept that Honeywell followed and we would try to extrapolate it to our educational environment. Torres mentioned that he thought I was more than casually interested [in TQM] and suggested I go through Crosby's Quality College in Florida. When I came back to Union, we decided to implement TQM. When I came to Northwest Missouri State U., I brought those biases along. I've tried to stay abreast of the field, but it's very difficult since a lot of literature is coming out. I've listened to Deming and read his stuff. I've studied Joseph Juran. We had Taguchi on campus. I've worked with others at Xerox and with Robert Galvin at Motorola. So that's been the journey. I don't know of any university that's been at this longer, but I'm not sure that's any great distinction. In 1984, we called our effort the "Culture of Quality" program. The term TQM didn't come about until 1985. Now, Quality is embedded in the culture of our institution. A Difficult Transition TQM/HE: Was the transition to a Quality culture smooth? Hubbard: There was a lot of anguish. It's easier to look back on it now with the perspective that the culture was going through a transition. We ran into all of the issues including: "we can't learn anything from business." One of the first speeches I gave to the faculty in 1985 was entitled "Air Conditioners and School Reform: Learning from the Factories." Since then, we've tried to be more sophisticated. This has paid enormous dividends, but there's a lot left to do. TQM/HE: What are some of the dividends? Hubbard: The easy ones are financial. For example, we've shifted over 10% of our educational and general budget to other areas, mainly from administration to instruction. Our faculty salaries went from averaging $3,000 below national norms, to at or above national norms. Our investment in academic equipment went from the very spasmodic spending of a couple of hundred thousand to $1.6 million this year. On the academic side, we've had 42 different changes. We in- creased writing in the curriculum by 72%. We put in an electronic campus, which includes a computer work station in every residence hall room and faculty office. Implementing TQM in the Classroom TQM/HE: How about getting TQM into the classroom? Hubbard: There are two ways of looking at that. First, we're teaching it in several courses. Second, our business faculty has encouraged us to integrate it into all of our courses. We've had some remarkable work with faculty as teams. They're looking at how to improve the efficiency of instruction, as well as the efficiency of learning. We've been addressing the issue of empowering students so they can take more responsibility for their own learning. We've also been teaching students how to work together in teams--in fact, we may be overdoing this aspect. TQM/HE: What about applying the Baldrige criteria to colleges and universities? Hubbard: We recently had the director of the award, Curt Reimann, and three senior Baldrige examiners, as well as the director of the Missouri Quality Award, on campus for a workshop. We spent a day looking at our planning process through the eyes of the Baldrige criteria. We worked our way through all seven categories asking, "How will this add value to higher education?" "What are the cultural impediments to doing what this is implying?" and "What are the technical and practical problems?" Our institution and faculty are now at a point to handle these questions. We're beyond discussing the basic categories and answering the question of who are our customers. An Eye on the Baldrige TQM/HE: Do you think your institution is ready to apply for the Baldrige award? Hubbard: We will apply for the Missouri Quality Award. They use the Baldrige criteria without any modifications. There's no question that we won't win the national award. And I don't think that, at the present time, there are any other institutions that would win. But, by 1996 it's possible. The thing that will hurt us most in the national application would be the trend data under "quality results." Having enough trend data is difficult. The other thing that may be problematic is how the "customer satisfaction" category is interpreted. In other words, are your students happier than before? If so, so what? Either we have to modify the areas we address in these categories or attach a note explaining what they're going to have to deal with in educational settings. The issues are: How do you define quality? How do you measure it? and How do you track it? TQM/HE: What types of "trend data" are you looking to include? Hubbard: Well, it's an enormous list. But to get a handle on this, we've built our planning model around key quality indica- tors. Right now, I have a Delphi technique going on with a large number of employers on developing quality indicators for a general education. I started with interviews. Then we sent them a list that included: the ability to read and comprehend technical material, the ability to communicate in oral and written forms, adequate math skills so that [students] can learn statistical process control, the ability to function on teams, and the ability to organize a team around an assigned problem. These are the things that employers have told me they look for in the people they hire. So what we're doing is getting seven or eight things like this so that we can carefully track them. We now use ETS's Academic Profile, which measures all of those except for the teamwork and what statistical process control implies. But those are easy to measure. We're establishing a baseline with a couple pieces of data so that we can measure where our students rank nationally when we get them. For example, they may rank in the 60th percentile along those dimensions. Then, we will measure how they're doing as sophomores and compare them to other sophomores around the country. We will repeat the same procedure for the senior year comparisons. We can't say we're good until we can show that the students have an advantage by choosing NMSU over other institutions that give that exam. In other words, if our students started at the 60th percentile, they would have to progress to the 70th percen- tile. A Different Way of Doing Business TQM/HE: What sort of reception do you get when you talk about your ideas on quality, and how they can and should be applied to higher education? After all, you're suggesting a different way of doing business. Some presidents might consider this threatening. Hubbard: On the surface, I've been treated with respect. I get many more invitations to speak to faculty and my colleagues than I can handle. On the surface, that would appear to be good. But I'm sure there's cynicism. One president (who's a friend) and I were talking about what we were doing--particularly in trying to improve general educa- tion. That's our core product. He said that he would not go near that [TQM] with a 10-foot pole--the faculty would just beat the heck out of you. The good news is that, since he's been exposed to TQM, he's requested a sabbatical from his board to study it. The culture in higher education, which has built up over centuries, is very resistant to the kind of leadership described in the Baldrige award. Deming once told me that the trouble with higher education is the turnover rate in the top management. Lewis Mayhew, emeri- tus professor of education at Stanford U., said: "You show me an institution that has emerged as significant, and I'll show you a leader that was determined and stuck around long enough to change the culture." The first thing the faculty will ask when a new president talks about improving quality is, "You're saying we're doing a bad job, therefore you don't love us, so we can't follow you." It may take a couple of years to get over this issue. The second thing faculty say is that the president doesn't have the right to ask questions about quality teaching--"You can't ask if we are measuring or tracking student performance because you're an administrator." But we got over these issues. If you're not ready to confront those issues, you're proba- bly better off not starting on a TQM journey. For more information, contact: Dean Hubbard, President, Northwest Missouri State U., Maryville, MO 64468; Ph: 816/562-1212. Always Room for Improvement. [For more information or to subscribe, contact: TQM in Higher Education Magna Publications, Inc. 2718 Dryden Drive Madison, WI 53704-3086 Phone: 608-246-3580 or 800-433-0499]