OMED: Educational Services-raising expectations and performance

Summary form only given as follows. Since its inception in 1979, OMED has been an organization of continual change for the benefit of its customers. It has gone from being a comprehensive student services provider to an organization that focuses on the business and engineering of education. What was once the Office of Minority Educational Development (OMED) is now OMED: Educational Services. The new model and approach has allowed OMED to create a portfolio of activities and services designed to meet the ever changing needs of our students. This portfolio is customer (student) centered and driven by paradigms that are fundamental to systems engineering and business success, and designed to create quality diversity. Those philosophies include: creating a maintaining a culture that expects outstanding performance; viewing education as a manufacturing process that is designed to generate a desired output from raw material; coaching students to manage the system through the development, practice, and refinement of strategies; empowering students to become proactive learners and problem solvers who are intellectually adaptive; serving students as individuals; one at a time; couching the educational process as a family investment that is to be systematically managed; treating students as customers and valuing their “business” and their input; ensuring process and program development that is data driven. The results have generated a significant improvement in grade averages and retention rates with underrepresented students performing on par with the overall population