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Team-Based Projects Lead to Real-World Results
 The National Graduate School (NGS) serves its students directly through results-driven projects, which replace the written theses. It is through these projects, overseen by a supervisory faculty member, that the students apply principles learned from the completed comprehensive curriculum of the MS Degree in Quality Systems Management. This discipline focuses on principles of contemporary business management and implementation of these principles to quality systems and management.
The Project Management Team is formed by students of the graduate degree program who have joined as a team due to varied backgrounds and skills or from a common interest in a project. Collaboratively, the students of the Project Management Teams work on a year-long project, with a sponsor, applying the principles learned in the comprehensive curriculum of the Master’s Degree Program in Quality Systems. At the end of the year, the students present their Practical Business Projects at the President’s Conference for Performance Excellence in a professional forum of colleagues and judges from industry and government.
Student Profile
 The adult students are professionals from the public and private sectors who are pursuing a graduate education while working full time and maintaining professional and personal lives. The profile of the NGS student is one of high commitment to colleagues, team work, sensitivity to confidential information and business practices, and to the achievement of a graduate degree.
Project Sponsorship
As part of the NGS Masters Degree Project, the designated Sponsor imparts the “vision” and senior-level guidance which ensures that the individual project supports the overall organizational mission and goals. Each Sponsor also signs the Memorandum of Understanding or Charter which sets out project deliverables and establishes project success metrics, e.g. enhanced readiness or variation reduction.
Sponsors may participate at one of two levels: Senior Sponsors represent the organization’s vision and commitment to the project. Day-to-day Champions ensure that the project receives the internal resources, access and support.
In-Progress Reviews (IPR)
 Once the team has identified the project scope and has secured the champion and day-to-day sponsor for the project, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is signed with a representative from NGS present, and the process begins. There are periodical IPR’s where the team updates the sponsor on the analysis and development of the project. Some of the tools used in the beginning analysis of the project are, integrated benchmarking, activity-based costing, network diagrams and charts and six sigma methodologies. It is essential that the team, with guidance from faculty, establishes a contingency plan and takes immediate corrective actions to ensure the team can meet deliverables on time.
Projects Relate to Students' Every-Day Work
Most students choose Projects directly related to their every-day work. Alternatively, students join teams at sponsors such as UTC, Boeing, The US Coast Guard, Army National Guard, US Air Force, Bose, Bethesda Naval Medical Center, GE, Dell, Fleet Bank, Johnson & Johnson, or any of the over 300 organizations that have sponsored Masters Business Projects.
The Results
Successful completion of the Masters Degree Program depends upon proving the ability to analyze data for process improvement opportunities, utilize data and survey information to provide tangible, positive, repeatable results. The success of the project creates a mutual benefit to the student, the sponsor and the School. The student succeeds in achievement of the graduate degree, the sponsor receives high level management analysis and recommendations for process improvement and NGS enjoys a continued high reputation for commitment to its students and professional relationships with associates and colleagues.
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