Good afternoon colleagues,
Thank you, President Mason and Senator Gill for your updates.
As we all continue to feel... we are moving through a difficult period of disruption in higher education, nationally and in the state of Oregon.
Federal actions threaten our core research and educational purpose. State funding, already anemic, remains unpredictable. Student enrollment patterns shift beneath our feet. This unsettling time of uncertainty threatens to pull our attention away from the shared commitments that pull our community together.
Disruption always creates a wake. And where there is a wake, a slipstream opens. Think of the long-distance runner who drafts behind the leader, preserving energy, waiting for the opportune moment—the right time for wise action. In the wake of disruption, let us find that slipstream together. Let us create spaces to deepen relationships, build trust, and reimagine what our university can be.
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From my perspective, this work is already happening. Over the past two weeks, I have had meaningful and candid conversations with the Senate’s Executive Committee, graduates from the Leadership Academy, and, this morning, with Department Heads from across the University. In these spaces, the collective commitment to our shared purpose is palpable, as is a desire to keep imagining what we can become, even amid uncertainty.
Last week, I attended “Gather & Grow”, a biannual event for the graduates of our wonderful Leadership Academy for faculty and staff. Over the past year and a half, I’ve had poignant opportunities to meet the leadership academy group: in a moment of joy at the most recent cohort’s graduation last spring, and in a moment of mourning last fall as we emerged from painful institutional budget cuts. They have offered to support efforts to create a culture of shared leadership across the university, grounded in practices of authentic connection and care.
When we gathered for an hour last week, I invited the group to consider the definition of care from Bonnie Honig who writes: “[Care is]...to cultivate, daily, anticipation of another world and to live now dedicated to the task of turning this world into a better one.” And I asked them to tell stories of an imagined future University of Oregon in which the lived experiences of our students, faculty, and staff align with our values.
Here was a future in which, for example, a student meets with an academic advisor who is not overwhelmed and can be attentive to their specific needs. ...in which all faculty and staff are supported in finding a pathway to leadership. ...in which there is a tangible institutional commitment to “whole-person education,” in line with our liberal arts tradition.
What I heard from our colleagues was inspiring. And I believe that it is in spaces like these — where we gather with presence, intention and honesty — that we nurture the university as a community of shared purpose, rooted in trust.
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Our exercise in imagination at “Gather and Grow” was borrowed from a keynote speech I gave to the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology in Atlanta earlier this month.
There, we imagined a future academy more broadly, one shaped by the values the attendees held most deeply. I asked them: What would it look like to work and learn there? And more importantly, how would it feel to be part of it?
In the slipstream of this current moment of disruption, I shared with them a theory of change I have been working through and refining for almost a decade. It is rooted in these three dimensions of wise action that together can create the conditions for meaningful change:
- Values-enacted leadership,
- Shared purpose between faculty and administration;
- An honest and holistic culture of performance review.
In the remainder of my time with you this academic year, I hope to discuss each of these three action items in more tangible detail.
But, for now, let me leave you with the same message that I left them with. When the challenges feel overwhelming, remember, the true power of change lives in quiet moments of connection with colleagues and students.
In the policies we write and revise. In the next email we send—or choose not to send. In the formative feedback we offer to students or colleagues. In the thousands of other opportunities we have to put the weight of our effort into meeting our deepest commitments and values. In those small acts of intention, in that cooperative work of community, we just might find the slipstream that allows us to turn this disruptive present into a better future.