Kaizen —

may be translated from Japanese in one word as patience; however a better translation of the meaning is “the willingness to constantly pursue improvement a small step at a time.”

Dennis Fallon introduced this concept of striving for incremental improvement to the department during the CEE Faculty Planning Retreat held in the summer of 1993.  Dennis has long had an interest in management methods.  While reading Tom Peters’ Thriving on Chaos, he first encountered a statement of the kaizen philosophy.  At the retreat he proposed and the faculty accepted a goal of five percent improvement each year. Since that time, we have worked to apply kaizen in all departmental efforts.

In fact, kaizen is so well suited to all aspects of life, not just to academic, professional or administrative endeavors that we have officially adopted kaizen as the department’s motto.

Thanks to Mrs. Yuko Parker for the calligraphy that is used frequently around the department.