Propelling student success Davenport recognized for performance excellence If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know where you’re going.
commitment to Davenport’s mission to achieve the highest level of business outcomes and quality of education for our students.”
During the past decade, that perspective — a winning combination of fact-based reality and targeted aspiration — has propelled Davenport on an upward trajectory of steady improvement. As a result, the university was selected in February as a 2020 Michigan Performance Excellence Award recipient by Michigan Performance Excellence Council (MIPEx). The MIPEx award is the highest honor given to organizations in Michigan that demonstrate outstanding performance, leadership and operational excellence. Davenport is Michigan’s first university to earn this distinction.
With its focus on metrics, data analytics and market intelligence, Davenport has successfully raised key performance outcomes in several areas during the past decade. Especially noteworthy has been the university’s improvements in retention rates, which measures the percentage of students who return year after year. In 2009, year-to-year retention was just 60%. By last year, it had climbed to 77%. Dr. Pappas now hopes to build on that success and drive retention even higher with Vision 2025, Davenport’s latest five-year strategic plan. Achieving this retention goal requires a special focus on the challenges of first-year students who are the first generation in their families to attend college.
MIPEx is one of more than 30 state and regional performance excellence award programs that use criteria from the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award to evaluate organizations and industries including health care, nonprofit, education and businesses. Using the Baldrige criteria as its framework, MIPEx deploys an extensive review process to determine top performers. The MIPEx selection process was demanding and extensive, requiring a university wide commitment to the effort. Davenport leaders completed a 50-page application before MIPEx examiners spent 12-15 weeks evaluating the university’s performance. Nearly half of all full-time employees were interviewed as part of the evaluation process. “This recognition represents the culmination of a lot of hard work by Davenport’s faculty and staff,” said Dr. Richard J. Pappas, president of Davenport University. “But more than that, it is tangible proof of our
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“It’s key that we provide strong support for our first-generation students, who often don’t have experience — or others who can help them — with scheduling, financial aid and degree planning,” Dr. Pappas emphasizes. “If we provide the right support to all of our students, we can raise our retention rate into the 80s. It’s one of the most challenging goals in Vision 2025, but we’re confident it’s achievable.” Another performance indicator that contributed to Davenport winning the MIPEx award is satisfaction rates among graduates, which rose from 88% a decade ago to an impressive 95% today.
In addition, Davenport has added 24 new degree programs since 2009, including graduate programs in data analytics and cybersecurity, plus bachelor’s degrees in nursing, occupational therapy and health informatics and informational management. As a result of these aggressive and timely curriculum development efforts, employment of graduates has increased from 84% in 2013 to 92% in 2019. Dr. Pappas expects Davenport’s enrollment to exceed 8,000 students within five years under Vision 2025, but other metrics matter even more, he emphasizes. “Retaining and graduating students, then placing them in good jobs is most important to us. Now, more than ever, the Davenport University mission — to prepare and transform students to achieve the highest levels of academic performance, leading them to excel and advance in their chosen fields — is vital for ongoing progress and prosperity in our communities, our nation and our world.” Looking ahead, Dr. Pappas believes that the MIPEx award puts Davenport on the right path to become a worthy contender in the future for a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. “We’ve raised the bar during the past decade, but we also believe that education should always be moving forward,” he notes. “As trailblazers, we’re continuing to raise our aspirations and look to future possibilities.”
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