In 1996 Millersville launched a campus-wide initiative to incorporate continuous improvement (CI) concepts into our campus culture. Our approach concentrates on management by fact, benchmarking, empowering individual employees and work teams, customer focus, and cross-unit collaboration. We use CI primarily to improve administrative processes, relying on our academic outcomes assessment efforts (see Chapter 3), to enhance the academic side of the house. Approximately 40 CI studies of University processes have been completed, and another 20 or so are now underway. Many of these efforts have led to documented improvements such as saved time, saved money, or increased constituent satisfaction.

Successful CI implementation requires a change in organizational culture, and we are making marked progress in achieving this. CI implementation appears to be well organized and moving forward, and President's Advisory Council members indicate commitment to CI concepts. Employee training has been limited, however, and there is no University-wide system to ensure that employee suggestions for process studies are taken seriously and evaluated promptly. Anecdotal feedback indicates that not all staff members feel empowered to solve problems and create solutions for constituents.