Maranatha's accrediting organization, the Higher Learning Commission of North Central and a member of the North Central Association, encourages quality work.
Quality work involves working with a process (for example, the recruiting, admissions, hiring, or budget process) to identify inefficiencies in the process or to identify non-existent processes and then to evaluate, adjust, measure, report, and implement changes to that process. When a process is efficient, the product and end result will raise the quality of Maranatha's work.
Maranatha, therefore, is committed to encouraging its faculty and staff to focus on processes within the organization that need to be created or improved, so Maranatha can be as effective as possible--a goal that reflects the Apostle Paul's statement to "approve things that are excellent" (Philippians 1:9-11) and to "press toward the mark" (Philippians 3:14).
To encourage this type of process-thinking, Maranatha is intentionally nurturing a quality of culture that includes the Quality Planning Team, Quality Action Projects, and Quality Units and Leaders.
When a process need work, a department or a cross-section of people formalize this quality work into a Quality Action Project (QAP). As these groups evalute, adjust, measure, report, and implement changes to the process they're working on, they report results to the Quality Planning Team, using the Quality Action Project Worksheet and guided by the Six Stagesof a Quality Action Plan.
Maranatha always has at least three active institutional (or Vital Few) Quality Action Projects focused on institutional processes. These projects are submitted to the accrediting agency (AQIP) for formal review and approval. Simultaneously, each Quality Unit (basically each department) on campus is responsible to perform quality work on a process integral to their department. The Quality Planning Team evaluates all institutional and departmental QAPs.
At the 2006 Strategy Forum for AQIP, Maranatha presented the following football metaphor about quality processes at Maranatha.
How Quality Works at MBBC