The Daily Bulletin

Please join the Civic and Community Engagement Office for the webinar "PSU Next: Building Community on Campus and Beyond," featuring Cynthia Gomez and Kelly Gonzales from Portland State University, on Thursday, November 4, at 2:00 p.m. This event is presented by the CUMU Learning and Sharing Virtual Series and is free to members of the Buffalo State College community.

During the pandemic, we have discovered deep differences in how the members of our university community think, how we experience our work, the questions we ask, and whose perspectives we value. In this session, the presenters will share their experiences with “PSU Next.” PSU Next engaged a dozen faculty members, administrators, and students in several institution-shaping projects that have been launched since May 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. They met regularly for conversation during the academic year to (1) explore new ideas through their different perspectives, (2) reflect on what they have learned from their  experiences this year in the context of the pandemic and (3) practice behaviors intended to prepare them to be responsive and resilient as they pursue their urban-serving mission in a changing world.

They initiated and supported these growth efforts by creating a new space on campus where they shared experiences, reset and reoriented themselves, and listened to each other. They began in relationship. The members of PSU Next practiced behaviors that can help them create an institution shaped by all their voices and responsive to the needs and expectations of both the members of their campus community and of society as a whole. They wanted to understand how their campus culture shapes who they interact with on campus and in the broader community, the roles they usually play, and the assumptions they make that may no longer be true or perhaps have never been true. By not having a set agenda or a particular problem to solve, they could use their time together to explore ideas and make sense of their experiences. They did not rely on their usual ways of thinking or traditional roles that affect how they usually interact with others. They practiced ways of working together that they will need when dealing with complexity.

Please register online for this webinar and any others in the series you may be interested in.