The Community Membership and Support Category of the Relational Cultivation Domain is another strong component of my current professional/teaching practice. I am a social person by nature and thrive on the positive energy exuded by students and other faculty and staff. I truly appreciate EPS’s program and people and am proud of my role at the school. I thoroughly enjoy (probably more than anything else) connecting with other community members and prospective community members. Given that I have only been at EPS for two years, I have participated in a large number and wide variety of community activities.
In the coming years, I plan to continue to be an eager supporter of EPS, both inside and outside of the community. This is clearly an area that comes naturally to me. I would like to improve in two areas:
- Reorient my energies to spend less time on community membership and support (a preferred activity) so that I can spend more time working on other indicators where I have room for improvement.
- As part of my commitment to staying on the cutting edge of recognizing and supporting diversity, I would like to investigate my unconscious biases. While I am clearly trying hard to recognize and support diversity in all its forms, I probably have some blind spots, and I’d like to know what they are. In the coming months, I will contact Bess McKinney, our Equity and Inclusion and Compassionate Leadership Coordinator, about how best to do this.
The Collegial Dynamics Category of the Relational Cultivation Domain is another strong component of my current professional/teaching practice. I have a genuine interest and appreciation for my colleagues and what they are teaching to students and that makes having relationships with them, partnering with them, and socializing with them all high on my list of priorities.
In the coming years, I plan to continue to engage with my colleagues the same way that I have been–respectfully and productively. In terms of deepening my practice, I would like to:
- Continue to seek out opportunities to collaborate with colleagues on projects. I am currently still working out the details for the spring 2021 field trip to Bellingham with Molly Lori. If that is a success, I will work to make that a yearly event. As collaboration ideas tend to arise rather spontaneously, I will create a running list of new ideas so I can populate and act on them as time and energy allow.