Introducing the Campus Climate Collaborative

Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:

Last Friday, I called on all of us to remember that our mission is to teach, create, and advance knowledge. I said that in doing so we must affirm our values and principles to guide decision-making, to engage across our community, and to address discrimination and harassment.

As the first day of classes approaches and we look forward to welcoming all of our students, I am writing now to announce one effort designed to help us realize the full potential of our mission: the Campus Climate Collaborative. The effort has a single goal: to embrace inclusive pluralism while rejecting discrimination and harassment as antithetical to our values and our identity.

Our campus climate is shaped by the dynamic interplay between the many and varied components of the Columbia community. The feel of campus is shaped by individual behavior; by the activities of small groups and by larger groups of varying sizes, affiliations, and purposes; by programming both broad and local; and by the structures and supports provided by the University centrally.

The Campus Climate Collaborative will proceed through three parallel, coordinated efforts.

First, school and unit leadership will work with their communities to nucleate small groups to discuss current opportunities and challenges and develop a set of ideas to strengthen our ability to deliver on our mission. Over the last two weeks, I have spoken with many people who have already come together with colleagues to think about how best to improve our campus climate, generating a range of ideas and proposals. This component of the Campus Climate Collaborative will build upon these existing efforts to create a dynamic small group network across schools, driven by the interests, concerns, and engagement of faculty, students, staff, and leadership.

Second, we will ensure that these localized conversations are coordinated and have support and resources centrally. We will bring together this small group network with school and unit leadership to identify common priorities, share best practices and strategies, create alignment across schools and units when desired, identify areas in need of greater attention, and advance our learning continuously as efforts—and events—evolve. While areas of focus will be driven by the small group network, recent conversations suggest that they are likely to include approaches to campus access, managing classroom conflict, opportunities for skill building and training, and engagement with our neighborhoods. The coordinating committee will be guided by Dennis Mitchell in his role as Senior Advisor for Inclusion and Belonging and will work closely with student life teams. We will share more information about the leadership of this committee and ways to get involved in the near future.

Third, the central administration will support the implementation of this Collaborative, working with the schools and units to maximize our ability to provide the resources and support to implement the best ideas generated through these processes. The work of this team will be guided by the success of prior pilot-funding efforts, a strong commitment to partnership between local units and central resources, and the ongoing recognition of the critical role central administration plays in addressing the broadest and most pressing issues that affect our campus environment.

Over the last two weeks, I have met so many Columbians who believe deeply in our values and our mission and want to do all they can to improve the campus climate for everyone. Many of them have been hard at work on this for some time, and for that, I am very grateful. As we work to assemble the right processes, groups, and partnerships for this effort, I look forward to continuing to get your feedback and to sharing updates as they develop.

All my best,

Katrina A. Armstrong
Interim President
Columbia University in the City of New York