During an awards ceremony last week, Albany Technical College was honored for successfully completing Step Two of the four-step Georgia Oglethorpe Award Process. The Georgia Oglethorpe Award is modeled after the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award – now in its 21st year and arguably the most difficult award in the world for an organization or business to attain.

Georgia Oglethorpe is a non-profit public-private partnership that provides services to Georgia’s business, industry, government, education, healthcare, and non-profit organizations. It promotes both strategic and tactical organizational performance improvement and excellence. This is achieved by offering education, assessment, feedback, and recognition based on defined criteria for performance excellence - the same criteria used to determine recipients of the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award.

Albany Technical College was one of five Georgia organizations recognized for reaching one of the steps of the award. No organizations achieved the final step this year and therefore, none attained the Georgia Oglethorpe Award. In the past 12 years, only 14 Georgia organizations have achieved the award.

‘Earning Step-Two, the Challenge Award, is a great honor for the College,” said Dr. Anthony Parker, ATC President. “The recognition shows that we are continuing to work to improve our business practices from admissions to academics to continued education. The Oglethorpe assessment team gave us clear-cut ways to improve services to our customers.”