And now a moment for a commercial

Some of you may be aware that the UBC Program Office for Laboratory Quality Management provides an annual on-line Certificate Course in Laboratory Quality Management.  It is a unique course now entering into its seventh year.  Some of you might want to consider it as a continuing education program for yourself or others with whom you work.

Over the 20 weeks we cover a number of topics that would be helpful for the new or experienced Quality Manager.  We address international standards (ISO9001:2008, ISO15189:2007) as well as a lot of themes that one will see MMLQR including: Costs of  Poor Quality, Quality Partnerships, Root Cause Analysis, Risk Management, Document Preparation, Document Management, Quality Control, Quality Indicators, Continual Improvement, Six Sigma and Lean.

The course is highly interactive with much discussion going on being faculty and participants, and even more between participants in small groups.  It is the discussion process that makes the course so successful, and effective.  We intentionally keep the course registration fairly low in order to not compromise the opportunities for discussion and interaction.

The reading list is extensive, and all the books required are included within the course fee.  It is a very useful way to build a full, relevant, and useful Quality library.

We regularly have folks from across Canada and the US and from around the world.  Last year we covered a span of 16 time zones.

For those of you who need to have the course for continuing education credits, or for those interested in monitoring that the people taking the course are actually taking the course, there is regular evaluation of participation, project submission, tests, and examination.  

Our certification rate is about 85 percent.  And when last we looked about 90 percent of certificants have ongoing positions in laboratory quality management.

We have a prize for the person with the highest grade.

 

 
Those interested should go to www.POLQM.ca for additional information (including the results of last year's student evaluation of the course) and registration.
The course begins Wednesday January 12, 2011.

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PS: While international participation is encouraged and supported, the course is only given in English.