What Does it Mean to be an Exceptional Learning Community?

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students,

As many of you know, governance and the administration are working to develop a better definition of shared governance at the university this academic year. We have previously shared the charges for this ongoing work and we invite you to learn more about the initiative here.

The Shared Governance Advisory Group has met and is moving forward with Phase 1. This phase consists of articulating a vision of what it means to be an exceptional learning community. Although we have a vision statement as a university, the goal here is to add values-based context to that vision to help describe, among many things, how we approach each other and how we might work together to feel more included and empowered in our roles.

The question of what it means to be an exceptional learning community is extensive; it does not have a singular answer. In the spirit of shared governance, the committee would like to invite you to brainstorm around this question with us. We will then incorporate as many of your voices as possible in how we define what it means to be an exceptional learning community at the University of Kansas. Once the committee has created a draft based on the visioning exercise, we will solicit further feedback from you.

In order to gather as many of your perspectives as possible, we are hosting a visioning exercise for all of campus during the first week of classes in Spring 2023. We will use the Grove Visioning Process to carry out these discussions because it can help structure conversation around past contexts, present academic and financial realities that may affect our work, and future outcomes we all seek based on the strengths we bring to the table. You can learn more about the Grove Visioning Process here.

We invite you all to sign up to participate in the exercise by Friday, December 16, 2022, on the governance website here.

This endeavor has potential to improve the culture and working relationships at KU, and we ask for your help to bring it to completion.

Thank you for all you do,

Nicole Hodges Persley, Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging

Ani Kokobobo, University Senate President

Mike Rounds, Vice Provost for Operations and Human Resources