I love April. Spring, growing things, bird sounds, over the hump of the time change, and looking toward the excitement of summer, while still trying to be present for the final few weeks of the semester. To me, April feels like you’ve turned the corner in a running race, and can see the finish line, and you are both excited and tired at the same time. One of my favorite places is the “yes, and” of the rhythm of life. I can be both tired and excited. Bruised but still going. I can struggle and still have strength.
(Selfish plug: If you have not signed up to attend a Struggle Well class, you should. We dive into these concepts in depth; and with the outcomes we are seeing, I can almost guarantee you will learn something new.)
With that said, the other thing I love about this season is the palpable sense of change. We are making progress with the infrastructure that supports a well-built organization. Momentum is growing at all parts of the institution, and most importantly to me, as CWO, we launched the Community Health and Well-Being Needs Assessment in March and were blown away by the response rate. Nearly 2,500 individuals contributed their voice. Thank you for being one of them if you shared your feedback!
As we moved the survey forward, we took a thoughtful, intentional approach supported by University leadership and grounded in a shared commitment to not only gather data, but also communicate it, and what we learn to inform our goals, objectives and outcomes. I share this with you because this collaboration and engagement are key descriptors of a learning organization. This is important because it signifies transparency, trust and collective action. It does NOT mean we’ll be able to tackle everything that comes out of the survey, but it will allow us to highlight key priorities and allocate resources at the Clemson Well-Being Council to address them.
This stage of the assessment strategy is understanding and learning about the needs of our population and how it maps to the resources we have or perhaps do not have. The team is knee-deep in analyzing the data. Our goal is to have a report for the Executive Leadership Team by the end of the month and begin socializing the priorities and recommendations with key stakeholders by the summer. Of course, I’ll likely share via the Elevate Well-Being blog series the actions we are taking, and keep you informed on how we go about making systematic changes. In the meantime, since well-being is everybody’s job, not just mine, I encourage you to get outside in this beautiful spring weather, reflect on where you are in your journey and where you’d like to be, and explore the vast number of resources Clemson has to get you there. We’re all on this journey together. It’s a lot more fun when we share it as a community than trying to do it on our own.
