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Dear colleagues:

I hope you had a chance to watch the chancellor’s welcome message last Friday. With classes starting this week, I wanted to take a moment to provide a word of thanks and encouragement as the new academic year begins.

First, I’m grateful to all of you for the hard work you’ve been doing all summer to prepare for the year—work that I hope has been bracketed by long intervals of rest and relaxation. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve learned how truly vital personal well-being is and, likewise, how important values are to carrying out our work.

In fact, we’ve learned that values are as important as the work itself.

Let’s start with compassion. You need it for yourself, your students, your colleagues and yes, for your leaders. We’ve all suffered loss and have suffered anguish the last two-plus years due to the pandemic, the Marshall fire, the shootings at King Soopers, and the convergence of national, global and personal events and movements. We know now, at a deep level, the value of compassion toward ourselves and others.

Then there is cooperation. Our best achievements at CU ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ are built on partnerships—with faculty colleagues, with our hard-working staff partners and, of course, with our students and their families, and with the public. We know that we serve the public good most effectively when we work closely together as partners and not as adversaries or competitors.

Then there is concern. Concern means being present: being thoughtful of the needs of our students, our academic and Strategic Resources and Support colleagues, and the support units that help us all to succeed. Concern can be  mischaracterized as fear, anger or overreach, but true concern comes from a generous place: paying close attention to the people and processes that make things better.

All of these values rest upon a bedrock commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion—a real, substantive and integrated effort that informs all we do. I invite you to contribute your combined passions, commitments and creativity to this vital work of transforming our campus culture to create a strong and permanent sense of belonging in our students, faculty and staff.

In the end, these values that we employ in carrying out our mission are as important as the mission itself. In your work, as you go about changing lives, discovering and changing the world, I ask you to place these values at the center of what you do and how you do it.

My thanks to each and every one of you for your dedication to our students and to the university, and my best wishes for a great academic year. I look forward to engaging with you throughout the year. 

Russ

Russell Moore, provost
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