As the new year begins, 2003 promises to be an exciting time for Riverland Community College. Two initiatives are underway to help us provide the best educational experience for our students. We are working to improve the quality of our operation through AQIP and working to define and attract our next college leader to move us forward.

A year ago the college first announced its involvement with a relatively new re-accreditation process known as Academic Quality Improvement Project or AQIP. AQIP, an adaptation of the Baldridge Quality Improvement process commonly used in business and industry, is a new option for Riverland to use to retain its accreditation. The goal is for the college to become more &uot;quality-driven&uot; by using the AQIP criteria systematically to examine our operations and simultaneously provide the information to our accrediting body North Central Association.

An AQIP team has been coordinating efforts this past year to gather input from college stakeholders. In November the team spent three days in Illinois, at the AQIP Strategy Forum. Our group met with similar groups from other colleges and universities, to discuss AQIP processes and to sharpen our focus on our action projects.

The action projects relate to three areas for improvement that the college has determined to be high priority. These areas address issues that might not be undertaken as part of normal business. They include: 1) developing an inclusive decision-making process that empowers employees, 2) improving student success, satisfaction and retention, and 3) developing, clarifying and enhancing internal and external communication.

Next steps include identifying measurable activities in each of the areas, formulating action project teams to monitor and steer these activities, and collecting evidence of progress toward the various activities. Each September, the chief academic officer will report our overall progress to AQIP, and every three years a comprehensive self-assessment of progress will be compiled and, potentially, new action projects identified.

This activity, for the AQIP colleges, replaces the traditional self-study in the re-accreditation process. It allows the college community to stay focused on continuous improvement, without interruption, instead of conducting self-study efforts that are all-consuming for two or three years out of every ten and puts improvement efforts on hold.

It will be essential that the next college president embrace and support this important project, but that should not be a problem. The process to find the new Riverland president has begun. A search committee of college employees, students and members from the community met for the first time in early December. Feedback from various internal and external groups helped the committee develop a candidate profile that is available on our Web site. An area of emphasis is that the candidate be a good combination of a steward of the college and a community activist who facilitates economic development.

Regular updates about the President’s search will be posted on our Web site. Visit www.riverland.cc and select &uot;News/Events&uot; to access the information. To review the job posting, select &uot;Community&uot; and Employment Opportunities.&uot;

James Davis is interim president of Riverland Community College, which has campuses in Albert Lea, Austin and Owatonna.