P. Your responses to the Organizational Profile questions are very important. They set the context for understanding your organization and how it operates. Your responses to all other questions in the Baldrige Education Criteria should relate to the organizational context you describe in this profile. Your responses to the Organizational Profile questions thus allow you to tailor your responses to all other questions to your organization’s uniqueness.
P.1a(1). Educational program and service offerings are the activities you offer in the market to engage students in learning or contribute to scientific or scholarly investigation. Mechanisms for delivering programs and services to your students might be direct or might be indirect, through partners and collaborators.
P.1a(2). Core competencies are your organization’s areas of greatest expertise. They are those strategically important capabilities that are central to fulfilling your mission or provide an advantage in your market or service environment. Core competencies are frequently challenging for competitors or suppliers and partners to imitate and frequently preserve your competitive advantage.
P.1a(2). Core competencies are one example of concepts that are woven throughout the Education Criteria to ensure a systems approach to organizational performance management. Other such concepts include innovation, use of data and information to review performance and create knowledge, and change readiness and management.
P.1a(3). Workforce or faculty/staff groups and segments (including organized bargaining units) might be based on type of employment or contract-reporting relationship, location (including telework), tour of duty, work environment, use of certain family-friendly policies, or other factors.
P.1a(3). Organizations that also rely on volunteers and unpaid interns to accomplish their work should include these groups as part of their workforce.
P.1a(5). Education industry standards might include industrywide codes of conduct and policy guidance. Depending on the regions in which you operate, environmental regulations might cover greenhouse gas emissions, carbon regulations and trading, and energy efficiency.
P.1b(2). Customers include the users and potential users of your educational programs and services. They are the direct users of your programs and services (students and possibly parents), as well as others who use or pay for your programs and services.
P.1b(2). Student and other customer groups might be based on common expectations, behaviors, preferences, or profiles. Within a group, there may be customer segments based on differences, commonalities, or both. You might subdivide your market into market segments based on educational programs, services, or features; distribution channels; geography; or other factors that you use to define a market segment.
P.1b(2). The requirements of your student and other customer groups and market segments might include special accommodation, customized curricula, safety, security, reduced class size, multilingual services, customized degree requirements, student advising, dropout recovery programs, administrative cost reductions, electronic communication, and distance learning. The requirements of your stakeholder groups might include socially responsible behavior and community service.
P.1b(2), P.1b(3). Student, other customer, stakeholder, and operational requirements and expectations will drive your organization’s sensitivity to the risk of program, service, support, and supply-chain interruptions, including those due to natural disasters and other emergencies.
P.1b(3). Suppliers and partners should include key feeder schools that prepare students for your organization. Communication mechanisms should use understandable language, and they might involve in-person contact, e-mail, social media, or the telephone. For many organizations, these mechanisms may change as market, student, other customer, or stakeholder requirements change.
For additional guidance on this item, see the Category and Item Commentary (http://www.nist.gov/baldrige /publications/education_criteria.cfm).