Continuing Education & Training Services
Visioning Process

Vision

Continuing Education and Training Services stakeholders include businesses, Kirkwood employees, learning facilitators and all learners in our community: past, present and future.  We also benefit from the partnerships and relationships we have with our stakeholders.  Our role is to provide opportunities for lifelong learning and fulfill the college’s vision and mission.  We value quality learning, risk-taking, continuous process improvement and rewards for our efforts by strong institutional support for entrepreneurial business practices.

We produce value for our stakeholders by creating strong, flexible partnerships with businesses that improve their bottom-lines.  We enhance the lives of our learners by providing quality learning thus improving self-enrichment and/or personal goal attainment.

Individuals and businesses want to remain in the Technology Corridor and others want to move here due to our ability to forge strong partnerships and because of the quality of life we provide for all learners.  This happens because we listen, learn, innovate and act.  We always have a seat at the table internally and externally when needs are identified and we use the latest technology to provide critical solutions.

We compete on the basis of value and partner with our competitors when necessary to avoid duplication in the market.  Because of our ability to deliver effective solutions, we are recognized as the expert leader in the state and nation in our field.

We are forward thinking, flexible, proactive, fun and operate a business division that provides financial resources to the college.  We embrace diverse ideas and people and infuse technology into our culture.

Capacity

As a division we assess community needs and trends on an ongoing basis.  Yearly we establish a market plan based on our assessments and past results.  We constantly measure our results using our business and marketing scorecards thus creating huge capacity to deal with complex issues and problems.

We have established and use an extensive intranet system to communicate internally. Quarterly we communicate our results to the entire college and our key partners.  Annually, we communicate our results to additional stakeholders.

In our division, everyone is a leader.  Staff training is determined by staff surveys and personal professional development plans and goals are written by team members and supported and implemented by their supervisor.

We embrace learning and collaboration by sharing best practices and moving knowledge through forums, case studies, networking and seeking outside knowledge and trends.

We empower and motivate our team by owning our results, rewarding and recognizing performance, encouraging innovation and risk-taking and celebrating our successes.

Ownership

We are passionate about lifelong learning and fulfilling the college’s vision and mission.  We are an effective, efficient, data driven, results-oriented division that is not reliant on outside funding.    The entire operation is a team effort because we take ownership and share resources.  We accept responsibility for our results in both good and bad times; we share results and learn from them.  Because of our efforts, we are respected and recognized locally, statewide, nationally and internationally.

Support

An underlying philosophy of the division is that no one succeeds until everyone does!  We embrace diverse ideas, sharing data, cross-training, team based activities, effective communication and recognizing staff.  Through team-based evaluation and ownership of our goals, performance expectations are developed and driven by everyone.  Because of our values and a belief to share our results, we are respected by others.

Measuring

Attached you will find our business scorecard.  A marketing scorecard is also being developed and will be available in January 2005.

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