Addressing Campus Climate...

This week I have spent a good amount of time thinking about my vision and how my vision fits into the work I do. My vision is to ensure that all teachers are trained to give every student an individualized and high-quality learning experience that allows them to continually make progress in the curriculum, feel socially connected, and contribute in a meaningful way to society. Right now, as graduate chair, a good portion of my work seems to be centered on creating systems and compliance checks for the state. I do a little on addressing quality when I evaluate teaching and when I examine supervision practices—but this is limited due to the main focal point of the school-turn-around being the organizational structure. I would like to work more with the faculty around the curriculum and with social connections.
​
I think feeling socially connected at the university is an area that needs attention. When I first began working at my current university, all stakeholders at the university took the campus climate survey. These survey results indicated that the climate needed to improve, and there was much work needed to do this. Some schools within the university conducted their own school climate surveys, and the results in the School of Education mimicked the larger campus survey. Many thought what would follow would be some shifts and some work to address these surveys—but we are over eight years later, and little has been done—at least not enough to trickle down, allowing faculty and staff to acknowledge and call attention to it explicitly.

In fact, if we were to do another campus climate survey in this post-COVID year, I think the university and even specific schools within the university would have poorer results than the first time these surveys were taken 8 years ago. I say this because as I read Gina Garcia’s Becoming Hispanic Serving Institutions: Opportunities for Colleges and Universities (for the university-sponsored HSI reading group), page 30 specifically calls out how campus climate which provides individuals a sense of belonging that leads to desirable outcomes (such as retention, persistence, and graduation) needs to be focused on. As I grow into leadership, maybe working on climate and building connections can be my niche and the largest thing I can contribute.

I think social connections are important to learning and growth in general, but I am often the quietest person in a room, so most would not have me targeted as the person leading such an effort. Could I do this, and do I have the skill set to do this work? I have a background in K-12, working with populations that struggle socially and providing authentic opportunities to connect—but could this background be built upon and scaled up to address an entire university’s needs and overall climate? I think my job as a leader is to see how this is approached in other universities or even companies with “healthy, productive, and positive climates” and see what initiatives, practices, and day-to-day ways of operating are transferable.

This right now seems like the most important move to make at the university in terms of leadership based on what I am hearing and seeing. I can also have this connect directly to my vision because I believe that higher-quality learning experiences happen in positive, constructive, growing environments than they do in climates that are negative. A sense of belonging and feeling socially connected are also needed for large-scale high-quality outcomes. If the university I work at is hoping to become a Hispanic-Serving Institution, I think we need more work on the current climate, so everyone feels welcome and feels they have the bandwidth to provide a positive culturally, linguistically, and racially connected campus and climate that Garcia calls for in her book.