Centre of Excellence

[ttmac]

I'm looking for a definition for Centre of Excellence and have not had much success.

The expressions seems to be used regularly for promotion however few of the users provide a definition.

I did find one definition which stated that "This overworked phrase is in fact ambiguous." (see

http://www.euroscience.org/WGROUPS/SCIENCE_POL/main.pdf)

Anybody? What does it mean?

Thanks for any revelations,

Tom.

 

[Grenage]

This overworked phrase is in fact ambiguous

I'd agree with that.

Personally, I would associate 'centre of excellence' with a self-applauding training firm.


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[Golom]

I once worked for a company that was heavily buzz-word oriented. One of their many initiatives was to establish "Centres of Excellence" within various occupational groups in the company (e.g. Accounting, Engineering, IT, etc.) This effort got lots of internal press mostly about how absolutely swell it was going to be to have "Centres of Excellence". They would attract the best and brightest in each field who would then share their collective wisdom with the masses.

Sadly, someone quietly asked "Yes, but what will they actually do?"

After the thunderous silence that followed, the whole concept was drastically scaled back and eventually faded into the background. No Centres of Excellence were ever created.

[small]No! No! You're not thinking ... you're only being logical.
- Neils Bohr[/small]

 

[stackdump]

I was looking for a contact at the University of Hull in the the UK, the google web search showed;


Centre of Excelence in ICT in Education

http://www.hull.ac.uk/ICT4Teachers/

- 12k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages


I am slightly concerned seeing education and excelence in the same sentence.

 

[ttmac]

Perhaps even more concerning is the sentence: -

"The Centre of Excellence for ICT has developed a an ICT equivalent for this model which we use to help teachers and participants visual the various steps involved in becoming an expert user of technology"

A University promoting a Centre of Excellence can't even get this right!

 

[Golom]

Apparently the focus is

"... expert users of technology ...",

and not "... expert users of English ..."

[small]No! No! You're not thinking ... you're only being logical.
- Neils Bohr[/small]

 

[phuzzy42]

If there's a Centre of Excellence, is there also a Periphery of Excellence, or does it imply the rest of the organization is second-rate? Does it make sense to gather all the excellence an organization has into one place and leave the rest with an excellence deficit? Is it better to produce 100 mediocre items or 5 that are excellent and 95 that are garbage?

 

[stackdump]

Indeed, the centre could be a point in the middle of a very large target. I guess other parts of the company would become "Off-Centres of Excellence"

 

[r937]

centre of excellence: rum-filled chocolate

r937.com | rudy.ca

 

[Olaf Doschke]

All in all I can agree with your criticism, but (big) cities have centres too and that doesn't imply that noone can get in or out of the centre, so expertise can be outside of this centre too (as you already prooved ;-).

On the other side centre of university would be misleading as it would surely only be interpreted as geographical/geometrical centre, wouldn't it? Besides being misread as centre of the universe, which of course is totally wrong.

Besides at the moment I prefer a sour cherry chili filling of my bitter chocolate to a rum filling.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[TheRambler]

Although I like r937's definition for center of excellence, I vote for eccentric excellence.

The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.

 

[sha76]

Please excuse the tangent, but sour cherry chilli filled chocolates? I'm drooling over my keyboard! Do you know the name of the chocolatier who makes these? Need to find out if they're available in the UK!

"Your rock is eroding wrong." -Dogbert

 

[Grenage]

Oh dear, sha76 on a chocolate rampage. OlafDoschke, what have you done!


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[addy]

I was looking for a contact at the University of Hull in the the UK, the google web search showed;


Centre of Excelence in ICT in Education

http://www.hull.ac.uk/ICT4Teachers/

- 12k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages


I am slightly concerned seeing education and excelence in the same sentence.

As someone who comes from Hull, seeing the words 'Hull' and 'Excellence' in the same sentence is always refreshing - despite the spelling!

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Hi sha76,

It's from Lindt (

http://www.lindt.com),

the chocolate bar is called "Edelbitter Mousse - Sauerkirsch Chili" in germany. I didn't find it in their online shop, but I'm sure you'll find something else there.

To be honest, it could be more spicy, but it was the first choclate bar I came across that had chili in it, and that mixture was quite common in hot choclate drinks of the old aztecs and mayas. Really a good idea, bitter sweet and hot at once.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[sha76]

Ooh, thank-you I shall get hunting! (they may be getting an e-mail!) I bought chilli truffle filled Magnum (as in the Wall's ice-cream!) chocolates in Milan earlier in the year, not expecting anything too great, but was very impressed!

"Your rock is eroding wrong." -Dogbert

 

[Remou]

(Completely off-topic spicy chocolate.

http://www.cocoabeanchocolates.com/mail.htm)

 

[sha76]

Ooh, now I'm drooling! Ireland does seem to have a lot of fantastic chocolatiers, I was very happy when I went to Cork!

Apologies for going further off topic (though anyone who recommends good chocolate makes a great impression on me!).

"Your rock is eroding wrong." -Dogbert