Dear Colleagues,
The COVID-19 pandemic and the national movements for racial justice have impacted us all. They have also impacted our nation, our state, and the students and the communities we serve. There is little doubt that the world has changed forever.
And that’s a good thing. None of us would wish to return to a national culture that could ignore racial inequities and injustice. Nor would we wish to return to a world that was blind to the ways in which our health and prosperity are interconnected. While the simple task of wearing a mask has become a symbol of a political and cultural argument, I think that most of us recognize it for what it is—a recognition that our lives impact each other and that the health and prosperity of each of us are defined by the health and prosperity of us all.
PSU has an opportunity to lead in a community that is forever changed by the pandemic and the movement for racial justice. The first step is to build a PSU that is better positioned to respond to these changes to serve the future needs of our students and communities.
As an innovative community that is driven by long-standing shared values, we should be unafraid to acknowledge what we have learned during this past year and to embrace the challenges that lie ahead. For me, these lessons can be summarized in two straightforward but insistent questions:
- How must we adapt our instruction, programs, and services to meet a future that is being redefined?
- How can we confront structural and systemic racism in our own work and in the communities we serve?
While I don’t have the answers to these questions, I know that—as a community—we can develop them together. For the last two years, we’ve been exploring what kind of future we want for PSU through the Futures Collaboratory. We’ve affirmed that PSU is an imaginative and equity-centered university that is ready to co-create a new chapter for our university. PSU has an institutional history and culture that one Futures participant described as “leaping to meet the future.” However, as another Collaboratory participant summarized, “Many of us across PSU ‘see signals’ of what is coming in the future. . . . , but we don’t have dedicated spaces to discuss this.”
I write to you today to launch ReImagine PSU, an intentional effort to provide spaces to create transformational possibilities at a larger scale. ReImagine PSU allows us to craft the university of the future while meeting our current needs for a sustainable budget. ReImagine PSU forms a critical component of OAA’s Closing the Gap strategy for addressing our budget challenges.
Because ReImagine PSU will only succeed with the engagement of faculty and staff, I am dedicating funds from Academic Affairs to respond to proposal requests for up to $25,000. While all of our funds are limited right now, it is my intention to try and fund as many of these requests as possible, since I believe that this work is critical to our future. These funds will be available throughout the 2021-22 academic year, beginning with the summer months of 2021. More information about ReImagine PSU including how to apply and due dates can be found on the ReImagine PSU webpage.
In addition, to help us engage in ReImagine PSU conversations, I will also provide funding for “ReImagine PSU Fellows.” Each College/School and Academic Affairs area will have the chance to nominate someone to participate in training this summer with the PSU Futures Collaboratory so that they can serve during the coming academic year as facilitators of ReImagine PSU and Closing the Gap discussions, working particularly with those who have been funded by ReImagine PSU.
A participant in the Futures discussions concluded that working for change at PSU can be successful “only if it leads to actual change. . . . Just talking about it now and then won’t work.” I couldn't agree more. ReImagine PSU and Closing the Gap are dedicated to supporting actions that move us towards a university that faces and embraces the changing world around us and builds an even stronger PSU for the future by supporting a sustainable budget.
As President Percy said in his March 25 email, Federal Covid Relief for Portland State, the recent investment from the federal relief funds gives us an opportunity to think differently about our future. We cannot and should not use these funds as a way to bridge to the past; the national and regional forces we face insist that we simply cannot go back to the way we used to do things. I invite you to join me in this opportunity to think differently and craft the PSU of the future.
Sincerely,
Susan Jeffords
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
