Under the leadership of our new Chancellor, ACC’s students participated in guided discussions about the sort of college that they need us to be. Their discussions led to four values that are now guiding (and will continue to guide) our work: Courage, Compassion, Joy, and Yes. This is the first in a series of blog posts about these values and what they mean to the instructional leadership team.
The instructional leadership team has had discussions about how these values will be actionable for us as a team and as instructional leaders. As a College, we have this statement to help us understand Courage: “We believe in honesty and openness.” But what does courage mean to you? To me? What does courage mean for how we come to work? For how we interact with students and with peers? For how we lead? For how we manage projects or respond to crises?
For those of us who lead and support our instructional work as part of the leadership team (Brandon, Beth, Nina, Susy, Erasmus, Mison, David), we have talked about how we will exhibit courage. The list below reflects where we landed:
- We will be courageous when conflicts arise. It takes courage to acknowledge conflict, empathy to resolve conflict, and respect to understand perspectives behind the conflict.
- We will honor the voices of others and have honest conversations about issues. We will not avoid difficult conversations.
- We will take responsibility for the impact of our decisions and actions.
- We will acknowledge our errors (we all make mistakes) and take responsibility for them.
- We will support colleagues who are in difficult situations.
- We will see the learning opportunity in challenging situations.
As instructional leaders, and on behalf of our AVCs of Workforce Education (Brandon), Health Sciences (Nina), Academic Programs (Beth), Distance Education (Erasmus), TLED (Susy), and College & High School Relations (Mison), and our Managing Director (David), we ask that you hold us all accountable to acting with courage.