President’s “Living Our Values” Initiative Seeks More Feedback from BU Community
President’s Living Our Values Initiative Seeks More Feedback from BU Community
As campus conversations wind down, poll asks students, postdocs, faculty, staff, and alumni to answer questions on what it means to live with our values
It’s been six months since Boston University President Melissa Gilliam announced the launching of the Living Our Values Initiative. She had talked about her vision during her 2024 inauguration speech, in which she said: “Creating a community in which each of us can fully contribute to the life of this campus requires each of us to commit to regarding one another with dignity and respect.”
In unveiling Living Our Values, President Gilliam said its focus would be on “living our values and building our skills in discourse,” while also “deepening our commitment to free expression.”
A steering committee that was formed to shape the initiative has been holding discussions with faculty, staff, students, postdocs, and alumni groups across BU’s campuses. Those will continue through early April, with the goal of gathering as much feedback as possible and capturing as many voices as possible to help shape the framework for what “living our values” means. And, importantly, the initiative’s website has a poll for community members to share their feedback. That link can be found here.
BU Today connected with the two people leading the Living Our Values steering committee: Kimberly Howard, a professor of counseling psychology and applied human development at BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, and Suzanne Kennedy, BU’s associate provost for special projects and emerging priorities. We asked for an update after six months of work.
BU Today: It’s been approximately six months since President Gilliam announced the Living Our Values Initiative. What’s happened since the launch?
The initiative’s charge is to identify the core principles and beliefs that will support our community as we engage with each other in the various roles we inhabit. Shared values and civil discourse will nurture an environment of respectful and constructive dialogue. Since the launch of the Living Our Values Initiative, we formed our steering committee and senior advisory group, built a road map and timeline for the initiative, consulted with peers who had led similar shared values initiatives at their institutions, and did internal and external landscape surveys of values work. We are now meeting with members of the community across our campuses to discuss institutional values, both in identifying and defining them.
BU Today: Can you talk about why it’s important for BU to collect and hear from community members about the University’s values?
In this period of community engagement, members of the steering committee will have met with faculty, students, staff, and alumni in over 80 meetings. Given that this initiative focuses on our shared values, it is critical that we get input from as many members of our community as possible. We seek to identify a set of enduring values that acknowledge our foundational principles, while providing us guidance and inspiration as we tackle the challenges of today and tomorrow.
BU Today: How are the responses going to be used and what is it that you hope to learn from the responses?
After April 5, we will aggregate all the data we have collected and identify the themes evident in the feedback community members have shared with us. We’ll have a sense of what values have emerged as being most important across all BU constituencies, and even more importantly, what we think those values mean in the context of BU.
BU Today: Are there any next steps for people to be aware of?
We are heading into a period of data analysis and then into creating a framework to support values. Once the shared values framework is completed and announced, we will spend the next academic year working with the community to determine how these values will be embedded in the work we do and the interactions we have. The initiative will keep the community apprised of any programming that is developed or events that happen.
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