Engagement

Unite and enrich the college community by offering, promoting and valuing individual and collective contributions to the common good and by developing closer and more collaborative ties and partnerships with the broader society. 

Goal: Create an intellectual and experiential understanding of civic engagement by:
• Sustaining and broadening campus-wide conversation about the theory and practice of civic engagement in order to build community through the art of public deliberation -a way for diverse groups to make decisions together about common problems they face;
• Addressing the critical issues of democracy including personal, community, ethical decision-making and civic responsibility through departmental curricula and co-curricular programs that encourage students to speak in their own voices and to respect the voices of others;
• Cultivating our humanity by developing new projects, curricula, teaching strategies, and approaches to civic engagement including encouraging students to think as citizens of the world by providing them with skills that help them take action and opportunities to act for the common good.

Goal: Build a shared sense of community by nurturing trust, collaboration, communication and healthy living by:
• Modeling and upholding an environment that respects and affirms all people regardless of differences;
• Facilitating a more deliberative democracy on campus by teaching the virtues of critical analysis, argumentation and active participation in respectful debate, which enables us as we come together as a community to work collaboratively on solutions to human predicaments and pressing problems on our campus, in our community and throughout the world;
• Encouraging a healthy lifestyle through wellness education programs and the provision of appropriate facilities to participate in health-promoting activities.

Goal: Broaden the college’s service mission to include stronger interaction, dialogue, communication, societal and economic benefit and mutual concern for the local community, region and state by:
• Exchanging ideas, complementary expertise, understandings and knowledge to promote success and improved quality of life, and to create a more sustainable region and community;  
• Increasing partnerships with community, regional and state economic development organizations that participate in business recruitment of knowledge-based enterprises and growth activities;
• Promoting the availability of educational, informational, cultural and recreational activities to the public, and stimulating public involvement in conferences, lectures, public forums and seminars.

Goal: Develop an in-depth understanding of the occurrence, observance, response and recovery of global emergencies to better prepare graduates as responsible global citizens by:
• Combining the perspectives and tools of several disciplines to  work on problems of global emergencies important to the world at large;
• Challenging faculty to put together courses and lines of inquiry exploring global emergencies that are newly developed or have not  been thought of before;
• Cultivate the opportunity to assume a position of leadership in emerging fields, such as global emergencies, that are important to the world at large.