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This is the first part of a two-part series that chronicles President Dean Hubbard's most significant contribution to Northwest, the Culture of Quality - its creation, implementation and future.
A campus bus driver, waiting for passengers to board for a tour, gets off and cleans his tires' rims. He doesn't have to - he wants to.
Such is a culture of quality.
An academic department chair works with her colleagues to create reading lists for every major offered so students know exactly what literature will further their knowledge within their chosen field.
Such is a culture of quality.
Students come to a university, cherish the experience and return home to spread the word to family and friends. Enrollment jumps.
Such is the result of a culture of quality.
For more than two decades, Northwest has followed a system of continuous quality management and improvement, introduced by President Dean Hubbard, that makes student success and satisfaction the institution's top priority.
Throughout its existence, the Culture of Quality has evoked from its members applause and apathy, admiration and animosity. Yet it remains the proverbial fuel that powers the Northwest machine and its numerous parts day after day.
And it will continue to do so, providing whoever succeeds Hubbard when he retires next July allows it.
The challenge
When Hubbard arrived at Northwest in 1984, the University was finishing a significant aesthetic upgrade. Some five years before, a fire destroyed 60 percent of the Administration Building and displaced several University offices, departments and services.
However, instead of simply rebuilding what was lost, then-President B.D. Owens envisioned a phoenix rising from the ashes: constructing new facilities while saving what could be saved from the Administration Building. The Owens Library, the Performing Arts Center and a new Wells Hall, among other improvements, were the products of Owens' vision of expansion that remains intact today.
But statewide, things didn't look so promising. Missouri was in a recession, and higher education arguably felt it most. At Northwest, enrollment numbers were poor and employee salaries were low. As a whole, the institution was simply no different than its competitors.
So much so, that shortly before he moved to Maryville, then-Missouri Commissioner for Higher Education Shaila Aery told Hubbard there was a move at the state capital to close Northwest and turn the campus into a prison. Aery would only oppose it after she heard Hubbard's plan to make the University worth keeping open.
Hubbard took this challenge back to Maryville when he took office at Northwest in August 1984. The first step was to measure the state of quality at Northwest - "management with facts," Hubbard calls it.
"If you can't measure it, you can't improve it, and if you don't measure it and you don't pay attention to what's happening over time, you won't improve it," he said.
That fall, he sent out a memo to the University asking "If you could wave a magic wand on campus and change one thing to form a culture of quality, what would it be?"
"I was just trying to get ideas, I wasn't trying to coin a phrase," he said.
What came back was more than 200 suggestions, which Hubbard and his administration compared with those offered by industry experts. Many were similar, such as the creation of undergraduate research programs and living/learning environments, where residence halls go beyond simply housing students.
That in mind, the administration set to work on identifying the University's core values, the goals it wanted to accomplish based on those values and building the foundation for what would become the Culture of Quality.
'If it ain't broke, fix it'
The basis for the Culture of Quality system was the work of late professor and college president Douglas McGregor, who Hubbard considers to be a pioneer in quality research.
McGregor's book, "The Human Side of Enterprise," describes two attitudes that typically drive motivation in the workplace. The first, Theory X, assumes people are lazy, dislike work and have to be manipulated and heavily controlled by their managers to do what they are supposed to. Conversely, the second attitude, Theory Y, says people are naturally ambitious, want to be part of a winning team and, under trusting and encouraging management, will work for the end satisfaction of knowing they got the job done.
Hubbard said most workplaces in society operate under Theory X, which he believes doesn't lead to quality.
"Don't create a system of distrust just because you have a few bad apples," he said.
Therefore, he wanted to implement a system where - among other things - management trusts employees, feedback is always encouraged and processes, not necessarily people, are evaluated when something goes wrong.
The result is a culture that, no matter how effective, continuously strives to improve itself. By viewing quality as a "receding horizon," a phrase Hubbard used, the culture would always be on the lookout for ways to adapt to ever-changing environments and expectations. With a well-oiled quality system, the University could focus solely on achieving goals that put students first and thus improve their performance.
"The Japanese have a saying, 'If it ain't broke, fix it,' instead of 'don't fix it," Hubbard said. "Everything can be improved."
Hubbard and his administration finally presented the Culture of Quality document to the Board of Regents for approval in April 1987. It passed, and what came next was unprecedented.
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