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Download a PDF of the April 2019 Task Force Report.

During the Fall 2018 College of Arts & Letters (CAL) faculty meetings, attendees voiced a desire for identifying and developing a culture of care, and to the end the College Advisory Committee (CAC) sent out calls for self-nominations for the Culture of Care Task Force (CCTF). The CCTF chosen by the CAC is comprised of a wide swath of members from the college with representation from students, faculty, and staff. The CCTF was convened in late February and was charged by the CAC to examine several issues and make recommendations.

One important caveat in reading this report – the Culture of Care Task Force members feel strongly that to be successful, this process should be built by the CAL community and include individuals who are new to this work. For example, most of us who drafted these recommendations did so from our own places of care in wanting to make CAL better. Therefore, we would like to preempt the rest of the report below by asking for patience and understanding if there are any areas of overreach, misidentification, or duplication of existing programs.

During our first meeting, each CCTF member identified a recent moment when someone showed them the type of behavior that we would associate with a culture of care. In sharing these moments we began to define for this committee what a culture of care is: ​active community empathy that leads with intention and kindness.

We felt this CCTF could be an antidote to the barrage of decisions and news that make working at Michigan State University a challenging place related to trust in the institution and at times in one another. The importance and necessity of the work we were doing were clear to us. We also understood that the phrase “Culture of Care” for many has become fatiguing and/or an empty concept, and this drove our work.