Let’s Keep the Process Going: Weigh In on NOVA’s Values by Today at 5!

November 7, 2022 / General NOVA News

Today’s topic is a follow-up on the ThoughtExchange (TE) on NOVA’s values.

The mission statement TE drew 94 different thoughts in response the question, “What do you believe are the key values that should guide and ground what is most important to the NOVA community?” and our community also provided almost 2,200 ratings.

As a reminder, our current values are as follows:

  • Opportunity With Excellence
  • Responsiveness
  • Comprehensive Educational Programs
  • Caring Environment
  • Public Trust and Responsibility

Most of these ideas resurfaced in the TE, as shown in the word cloud below, but they were captured in a more immediate and direct way. Note that some of these words/concepts are already included in the draft mission, and some are near-synonyms.

Colorful Values Word Cloud: accountability, people responsive, important, college, everyone, caring, opportunity, affordable, provide, diversity, value, academic, equitable, faculty, respect, work plus sign, quality, staff, first, workforce, excellence, stated, equity, matter, integrity, learning, many resources, actions, collaboration, education, culture, environment, community, access, support

As promised in my October 18 Tuesday Topic, I’ve reviewed and revised our current values in light of your comments, keeping to a list of five. My goals were to reflect your input and capture the core beliefs that drive our work. From your input, I am proposing the following draft revision of our values (in alphabetical order) and have included some of your thoughts as to why each proposed value (or its near-synonym) is important to our community:

  • CARE
    • Caring community: We should genuinely care about our students and our students should know that it is more than a job but a calling to care about their academic success.
    • A culture of care needs to be supported and enhanced not only for students, but for staff as well. CARE for everyone!
    • A Caring Environment is a MUST at NOVA. If folks do not care we are doomed.
  • EXCELLENCE
    • Excellence is instruction. That’s our primary purpose for existing.
    • If our work isn’t grounded in excellence and integrity, what we do doesn’t matter.
    • Focused on Academic Excellence: We are training the next generation of leaders; we want them to be prepared to go anywhere.
  • INCLUSION
    • We don’t want anybody to feel excluded. It is important to create a sense of belonging in the NOVA community.
    • NOVA offers an inviting and inclusive atmosphere where all students have an opportunity to be successful and to positively inspire future generations.
    • Collaboration is an important value for our community. To be a college for the community, we must make teamwork a priority. (near-synonyms)
  • INTEGRITY
    • Integrity: It is such an important characteristic for any person to be successful.
    • Integrity should be a value. We state it in our students’ code of conduct but it’s not explicitly stated anywhere in our values.
    • Accountability: This value lets our students know that we are responsible to provide education and to be good stewards of the money and trust they give for education. (near-synonym)
  • RESPECT
    • As listed in the student code of conduct this value is attached to 10 or so rules and lays the groundwork to how we treat those within our community
    • The students should always be valued, not only as a commodity but with dignity and respect
    • As a large educational institution we must collaborate, negotiate, and respect collective decisions and implement accordingly; the alternative is chaos.

This is just a draft—and it needs your feedback. I am looking for your input this time via a survey that asks you to vote on the values, and if you think one is missing, add it. The anonymous survey is here and will close at 5 p.m. today, November 7.

Based on your feedback, I will provide the revised draft values on Tuesday, November 15, along with a call for volunteers who want to work with me on crafting the NOVA definitions for these values. I’ll also work with the Office of Student Life to recruit student participants in this work.

Thank you for participating and sharing your thoughts. Next week, I’ll be sharing your feedback to the revised mission statement.


Republished from President’s Tuesday Topic, Nov. 1, 2022