The University of Oregon has been awarded a $650,000 grant to establish a new institute aimed at transforming the culture of leadership in higher education. 

The Values-Enacted Leadership Institute will be funded in part by a three-year, $650,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The institute builds on the work of the Humane Metrics in the Humanities and Social Sciences initiative, of which UO Provost Chris Long is a founding member. 

The Mellon Foundation has funded the humane metrics initiative to run workshops across institutions since 2016, and the Values-Enacted Leadership Institute is the next step for that work, bringing teams of people together to identify their values and then put those values to work to transform their institutions.

Long is a principal investigator for the project, working with co-principal investigators from the University of Maryland, Michigan State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Modern Language Association and European University Institute.

The humane metrics initiative will oversee the new institute, which plans to host summer workshops in Oregon for the next three years. Each year, five four-member teams will be selected to participate, with each team coming from the same university or college and representing humanities faculty, administration and staff.

Over three years, 60 faculty members, administrators and staff from 15 institutions will attend the workshops, where they will identify and implement the values that can re-shape relationships and re-invent institutional practices. The teams will represent research universities, community colleges and liberal arts colleges, with targeted outreach to historically Black colleges and universities, minority-serving institutions and other access-oriented institutions.

Universities in the United States and across the globe are “in desperate need of reinvention,” the group’s proposal says, which can only happen by creating a “consortium of initiatives committed to working collaboratively toward a future in which our shared values align with the policies, practices and structures that bring the academy to life.” 

“Change, like leadership, is collective, enacted by understanding and making the best use of the myriad connections, positionalities and agencies of a group of people with a shared vocabulary and a shared will toward a better future,” Long said.

He said establishing the institute as he takes on his new UO leadership role demonstrates how important a priority leadership development is for him and for the university and that this approach comes down to “trying to create a culture of trust.”

“To collaboratively create the university of the future — one characterized by and rooted in an ethos of justice, equity, access and joy — new sustainable communities of practice are required,” said co-principal investigator Bonnie Thornton Dill, dean emeritus and professor of gender and women’s studies at University of Maryland.

“It’s about tapping into the potential we have when we do our work in ways that are rooted in trust as opposed to how much energy we waste dealing with corrosive behavior, cynicism and alienation,” Long said. “This values-enacted approach emerges from humanities and is designed to be holistic, intentional and oriented toward interconnections with each other."

While the concept flows from the humanities “what we found is many STEM fields are yearning for this kind of approach,” Long said, referring to science, technology, engineering and math fields. 

“So much of higher education, and particularly around research assessment, is grounded in the practices of STEM fields,” he said, “and what we’re saying is we’re doing the same thing, but it’s grounded in the research of humanities, recognizing interconnectedness and the rich texture of our humanness and bringing that wholly into the academic enterprise.”  

The other principal investigators on the project are: 

• Bonnie Thornton Dill, professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and dean emerita of the College of Arts and Humanities, University of Maryland 
• Penelope Weber, project manager, Humane Metrics in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Michigan State University    
• Bonnie Russell, associate director, Mesh Research; product manager, Knowledge Commons, Michigan State University    
• Nicky Agate, associate dean for academic engagement, Carnegie Mellon University; editorial director, Carnegie Mellon University Press 
• Jason Rhody, senior director of engagement strategy, Modern Language Association 
• Simone Sacchi, research data librarian, European University Institute 

 —By Tim Christie, Office of the Provost