Greetings Colleagues,
I hope your spring semester is off to a good start. As we roll through the midpoint of the academic year, I'd like to update you on a few campus initiatives underway.
Strategic Plan
We continue to make movement on several priorities within our strategic plan, which you may recall was refreshed in 2022 to align with the U of M MPACT 2025 strategic plan. In our plan, under the public engagement priority, we have an initiative to achieve Carnegie Community Engagement designation by 2025. This designation focuses on mutually beneficial collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities.
The application is a comprehensive self-study based on community engagement best practices in higher education. Earning the designation and striving to maintain it will benefit the University and the community. Because the self-study items are updated for each application cycle to reflect current best practices, institutions following the updates will continuously improve their practices. We will analyze and improve aspects of community engagement such as breadth of opportunities, impact of opportunities, and partnership numbers.
The Carnegie classification website includes more information, the timeline for application, and shows a map of the 357 currently classified institutions.
This is an important and big undertaking. I am grateful to the application writing team working on this. Please support their efforts and provide information they may request from you and your unit. Members are: Lisa Erwin - Student Life, Jen Mencl - Academic Affairs, Jennifer Webb - CAHSS, Jane Carlson - CEHSP, Monica Haynes - LSBE, Amy Kireta - SCSE, Amber Cameron - UMN Office of Public Engagement.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
The search to fill the new executive DEI position continues. We held discovery sessions and received great input from members of our campus community. Thank you for your valuable feedback. That input is being used to design the position profile. As well we have formed the search committee and I want to thank this team for their time and effort on this important search.
Search committee members include:
Committee Co-chair Jeremy Leiferman - Student Life
Committee Co-chair Lin Xiu - LSBE
Carl Crawford - City of Duluth
Mitra Emad - CAHSS
Sean Huls - UMD Police
Kayleigh Karppinen - Human Resources
Jill Kolodzne - Student Life
Johan Lopez - Student
Ariri Onchwari - CEHSP
Joshua Strong - Student
Rebecca Webster - CAHSS
Susana Woodward - Student Life
The campus climate response team (CCRT) regularly reviews campus climate data to analyze how incidents are handled on campus and to identify trends and patterns occurring over time. Longitudinal reports are posted to the CCRT website with all identifying data removed from the incidents. The team also makes recommendations for action. The recommendations for this year are found in the 2021-2022 CCRT report.
One recommendation from the CCRT last year has been completed. UMD has a new comprehensive reporting website. Please bookmark this site and share it with others. Work continues to make sure the new site is linked in the right places throughout campus websites.
UMD is also participating in a systemwide survey on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Please watch your email at the end of this month for the survey invitation.
Campus and Climate Action Plan Input
The UMD campus community is invited to share ideas for the future of campus spaces. Please provide your input through the MyCampus interactive mapping tool.
We have a busy semester ahead of us. I will continue to update you as we move ahead. Thanks for your work and dedication to UMD and our students.
Sincerely, |
