In February 2008, I went on an LIPD visit to Richland College, Dallas, winner of the 2005 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the highest accolade for Quality in the USA.  Richland is at the cutting edge of quality improvement and benchmarking developments in both the Community College and Business Excellence sectors in the USA.

The purpose of the visit was to investigate leadership, policy and strategy, quality management processes in the pursuit of excellence. I aimed to investigate the key factors which have underpinned the change of culture within the organisation.

Some of the outcomes of the visit are:

• A subsequent visit to Richland College by my Principal, Paul Croke.
• I wrote the submission for Yale College, which won the overall Wales Quality Award 2008. Indeed, Yale College has become a sponsor of the Wales Quality Award 2009 Learning Prize.
• I wrote a research paper for the Centre of Excellence in Leadership, comparing Richland College to Runshaw College, Leyland.
• I presented this paper at the LSIS National Practitioner Research Conference in London on 25th-26th February 2009.
• As a consequence of the above, I have been given sponsorship to carry out a part-time PhD research project in Organisational Effectiveness at Glyndŵr University, Wrexham.

The visit to Richland College far exceeded my expectations. It is a truly remarkable organisation led for many years by a visionary President, Dr. Stephen K. Mittelstet. I hope that the ripples from this visit will have a lasting impact on the whole FE sector both in Wales and across the UK.