About Quest.

The Quest Institute, a non-profit organization, in partnership with Valley Christian Schools, is mandated to equip Christian schools anywhere with programs and experiences that help them serve their communities. Ephesians 3:20 challenges us not to depend on ourselves but to trust God - our limitless source. Ask. Think. Imagine.

Valley Christian Schools

Valley's Mission.

Valley Christian Schools' mission is to provide a nurturing environment offering quality education supported by a strong foundation of Christian values in partnership with parents, equipping students to become leaders to serve God, to serve their families, and to positively impact their communities and the world.

Philosphy of Christian Education

Our why

A relentless pursuit of improving educaiton.

Leaders in Education and Innovation

Who We Are.

Valley Christian educators believe we are called to be more than owners of programs but wise and generous stewards as well. The Quest Institute, a non-profit organization, acts as the conduit of the intellectual properties developed by VCS' Research and Development (R&D) department.  All programs are first conceived, built, deployed and refined by our students before public availability.

Daugherty Cliff
Dr. Clifford Daugherty
Dr. Clifford Daugherty is the President and CEO of The Quest Institute for Quality Education and former President of Valley Christian Schools (VCS). He joined VCS on July 21, 1986, where under his leadership, VCS constructed two separate campuses for three schools where enrollment more than tripled to over 2750 students, including 1600 in high school.
Rubino Robert
Robert Rubino
Robert Rubino is Vice Chair of the VCS Board, Co-Founder and Vice Chair of QI. He is a former CTO of KLA Tencor. Valley's leadership believes that we are not owners but stewards of the programs and Intellectual Properties gained over the years. QI was founded to make these ideals available to Christian Schools everywhere.
Karl Stewart
Karl Stewart
Karl Stewart is the CMO and VP of Product for QI.  He was called to Quest in 2020 after a career in Product Management for Oracle, Qualcomm, and Akamai.  He believes that Chrisitian education can be the best education on the planet if we can leverage our subject matter experts regardless of location.

Our Story

Quest for excellence.

The Quest Institute was founded in 2008 as an educational non-profit organization that would help Christian Schools anywhere with what ever programs and experience at  Valley that would help schools better serve their communities.  It started by helping the founders of Valor Christian in Colorado with it's initial curriculum and through the years it has helped schools differentiate their offerings with programs like space.300 which allows students to create a custom experiment and send it on a Space X rocket to the ISS for 30 days.

In recent years STEM programs that allow schools to offer Robotics programs at Elementary thru High School is growing area of interest for a number of schools and through the implementation of these program we have learned that access to STEM subject matter experts is a common challenge for most schools.  As such we have started the process of dual teaching with a remote twist. Books on the founding and development of the school can be found here.

In the palm of your hands.

Why

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Applying critical thinking skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math provide problem-solving building blocks for any future career.

A community of trusted partners

How we can help.

Exceptional teachers are rare assists in education. They exist but they are limited to the school where they are employed. Programs are difficult to roll out at schools because exceptional teachers are overloaded. Programs stall because teachers move on. All these issues and more make running a school exceptionally difficult. We want to help.

We partner with schools to establish immediate and long term goals. The approach will be to quickly implement pilot classes with remote instruction to inspire and evaluate student interest. In parallel we start defining short and long term goals and look at approaches that have worked at Valley and other schools. Whether helping school's setup their first makerspace or sharing our experience implementing custom experiments on the International Space Station we are happy to share what we have learned to further enable your offering to your community.

Quest is pioneering the concept of dual teachers with a remote twist. We make our subject matter experts available to instruct remotely directly to your classrooms, on your schedule.  We don’t teach to a student screen, we teach to a classroom and partner with a local teacher (facilitator) to implement the new programs. Remote Instructors guide the class and are there to answer questions to make sure the class rhythm doesn’t stall while the facilitator manages the students and controls the energy in the room. Although remote, the remote Instructors are not virtual they create real relationships with the students. Intentionally engaging with the class, learning their names and interests and sharing their lives with students creates a real connection. The future of this program is to provide elite Christian instructors from anywhere in the world that can be weaved into the fabric of the local schools.

This approach allows schools to implement programs in weeks as opposed to months and years.

Capistrano Valley Christian Schools
"Quest has made bringing a modern and effective STEM program to CVCS easier than we could have imagined. Their expertise helped us overcome the barriers and uncertainties that had kept us from launching a robotics program for years. What truly sets Quest apart is its commitment to helping us make the program our own. They’ve taken the time to understand our school, our people, and our goals. In doing so, they’ve helped us craft a program tailored to our campus that we can eventually sustain independently. Quest stands out as a responsive and empowering partner in a field crowded with impersonal, indefinite, and often ineffective options."
– Joseph Jasper, Educational Technologist, Capistrano Valley Christian Schools
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic School
"Without the elegant approach of the QI team, our students’ experience wouldn't have been nearly as beneficial as what it turned out to be in terms of making them even more excited about STEM. Our students expressed an eagerness to do it again next year. Several are cementing their visions of further education and careers in STEM fields, precisely because of this exposure. Kudos to Quest for providing an amazing and life-altering lift to our aspiring young learners!"
– Kelly Francis, Executive Vice President, Cummings Aerospace
Veritas Academy
"We just revealed our yearbook and Theo came to me and said we forgot to add you in the staff pages, that we should have included you because you were teaching them the robotics class. I tried to explain that you weren’t an employee or on our teaching staff, but I got myself thinking that maybe I should have included you. Kids are special."
– Susie J. Brooks, EdD, Founder and Headmaster, Veritas Academy

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