On 10 September 2019, the Accreditation Commission of Evaluationsagentur Baden-Württemberg (evalag) made the decision to certify the mdw’s quality management system with no conditions imposed. And with that, the mdw had achieved an audit result that only very few elite universities have thus far managed to earn.
From now on, the mdw will be concentrating on making sure that the effects of the processes initiated both in preparation for this audit and during the two-year auditing phase will persist over the long term. In numerous workshops and in group and individual conversations with the Rectorate team, teaching staff members, students, and administrative employees, principles derived from the question, “What do we understand quality and/or high-quality work to be?” were developed with an eye to their applicability across the entire mdw. Central to these observations were the areas of studies and teaching, advancement and appreciation of the arts (EEK), and research, as well as the overarching areas of personnel, administration, and internationalisation.
Building on this preliminary work, a model for a quality management system (QMS) suitable to the mdw was developed and then described as part of the self-evaluation report required for the audit. The ambition here at the mdw was to treat the various approaches to this topic at our institution with the greatest possible sensitivity, thus doing justice to the mdw’s complexity as well as defining a common perspective for the QMS. An essential element here was to equip the quality management system with informal feedback loops of the kind that are typical above all in teaching and in EEK. Just as important is reinforcement of the culture of committed exchange that has been established over the past few years by the Rectorate team, a culture that makes it possible for all of the central groups served by the mdw to take part in important development- and strategy-related processes. And in turn, the willingness of members of the university community to involve themselves here testifies to the existence of a real-life culture of quality.
Precisely this culture of quality is given special mention in the report by this audit’s evaluators. In their report, the evaluators indicated that they were “deeply impressed by the quality-consciousness, real-life culture of quality, and quality management system that we got to know at the mdw.” This conclusion was reached by the evaluators following altogether four days spent in themed and/or cohort-specific group discussions with a total of over 80 members of the university community in order to get an impression of their views.
What does the mdw conclude from all this? As part of the auditing process, the mdw had itself comprehensively assessed by a group of outside experts. And the initial scepticism toward this process that certainly did exist here and there has since given way to the conviction that the intense and in part critical examination of one’s own doings as well as an outside perspective absolutely are helpful to the university and its further development. The view from the outside helps all employees and the mdw as a whole to perceive their own strengths as well as existing potentials even better than before, thereby making it possible to assume a self-confident position within the landscape of university-level institutions.
Looking forward, the important thing now at the mdw is to keep the central theme of quality and quality management present in everyone’s minds—because the mdw needs to continue developing in a positive direction if it intends to also pass its next quality audit (in 2026) with flying colours.
