Catalyst of Collaboration

On September 26, 2019, I had the opportunity to address the Michigan State University President’s Council, which includes the Deans Council and the Executive Leadership of the University, about the values-based strategic planning process we have undertaken in the College of Arts & Letters. In our ongoing effort to cultivate habits of openness, we have been consulting with colleagues and carefully considering how to most appropriately make some of the things I said that day public. I offer an account of the presentation here with the slides the College of Arts & Letters Marketing and Communications team and I developed. In order to provide a more textured sense of the thinking that informed our process and approach, I have inserted meta-reflections in italics.

As we considered the responsibility that comes with being asked to be the first College to present at the newly established President’s Council, we reflected on how best to emphasize the kind of collaboration that will be required across the University if we are to create the culture of care and accountability we need in the wake of the crisis we are experiencing. To this end, I began by returning to January 2018, to the survivor impact statements, and to the values to which my dean colleagues and I committed ourselves.

In the wake of the survivor impact statements in January 2018, the MSU deans gathered at the…