UA CHANCELLOR JOHN WHITE ELECTED VICE PRESIDENT OF FOUNDATION FOR MALCOLM BALDRIGE NATIONAL QUALITY AWARD

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - University of Arkansas Chancellor John A. White has been elected vice president of The Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

Established by the U.S. Congress in 1987, the Baldrige Award has won renown as the most successful cooperative program between the government and the private sector in the nation’s history, recognizing corporations and organizations that have attained measurable excellence through significant improvements in quality. In 1998, the president and Congress approved legislation that made education and health care organizations eligible to participate in the award program.

White has been a member of both the Foundation’s 12-member board of directors and 70-member board of trustees since 2001. As the new vice president serving a one-year term, White succeeds Dick Davidson, chairman and CEO of Union Pacific Corp., who was elected Foundation president. It is customary for the vice president to be elected president the following year. There is no remuneration for serving on the Foundation’s boards.

"The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is the nation’s most prestigious quality award," White said. "The list of past recipients includes some of the nation’s best-run corporations. Recently the award criteria were changed to include education and health care organizations. I am honored to be the first representative from an education organization elected an officer of the Baldridge Foundation.

"Serving on the board provides an opportunity for me to learn first-hand how other organizations have improved the quality of the products they make and the services they provide," White added. "We are striving to make the University of Arkansas one of the top public universities in the nation, and there is much we can learn from the winners of this annual competition and their unblinking focus on the quality process."

Members of the boards of trustees and directors include such notables as Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., chairman and CEO, IBM Corp.; Dieter Zetsche, CEO, DaimlerChrysler Corp.; Glen A. Barton, chairman and CEO, Caterpillar, Inc.; C. Michael Armstrong, chairman and CEO, AT&T; Edward B. Rust, Jr., chairman and CEO, State Farm Insurance Companies; Michael B. Wood, president and CEO, Mayo Foundation; and William Clay Ford, Jr., president and CEO, Ford Motor Co.

The award is named for Malcolm Baldrige, who served as U.S. secretary of commerce from 1981 until his death in a rodeo accident in 1987. His managerial excellence contributed to long-term improvement in the effectiveness of government.

The award was brought into being to enhance the competitiveness of U.S. business and to add legitimacy to the emerging quality movement. The award was designed to promote quality awareness, to recognize quality and business achievements of U.S. organizations, and to publicize their successful performance strategies.

The Foundation strives to:

• Raise sufficient funds to establish an endowment which, when supplement by fees from award applications, will permanently fund the program;
• Oversee the investment of endowment funds;
• Review program accomplishments;
• Disburse required funds to the national institute of standards and technology;
• Review the plan and approve associated funds requirements for subsequent years to ensure a successful awards program.

Recent two-time Baldrige award winners are the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company and the Solectron Corp., the world’s leading provider of electronics manufacturing and supply-chain management services.

Winners this year included, for the first time, two school systems from Alaska and New York, and an institution of higher learning, the University of Wisconsin—Stout.

White has been chancellor of the University of Arkansas since July 1997, engendering improvements in academic quality and reputation, increases in the size and quality of the student body, gains in the diversity of the University community, and dramatic increases in research funding and private gift support.

He is serving his second six-year term on the National Science Board, the policy-making arm of the National Science Foundation. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education and a fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering at the University of Arkansas in 1961, White worked for two years with Tennessee Eastman Company, and then went on to earn a master’s from Virginia Tech and a Ph.D. from Ohio State.

He spent most of his academic career at Georgia Tech, rising through the faculty ranks to serve as dean of the College of Engineering from 1991-97. From 1988-91, he also served the National Science Foundation as assistant director for engineering and as acting deputy director.

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