Dear CC Community,
Thank you for contributing to our Project 2024 discussions throughout this academic year. You came together, shared, debated, and problem solved. And we heard you. Your input is providing the foundation for our work — to do what we do better.
We also want to extend special thanks to our Project 2024 Steering Committee members, who led these conversations and synthesized your responses. Today, we share the key takeaways from this year’s conversations.
Question 1: How can we do what we do better?
Your answers prioritized these shared values:
- Supporting health and well-being of the campus community
- Working on antiracism
- Ensuring equity and access
- Protecting the environment
- Prioritizing clear, transparent, and effective communication
Additionally, the committee discerned one common thread: the desire for connection. This theme arose in comments about the importance of coming together around shared goals and connecting in a variety of ways:
- Across blocks
- Constituencies: Students, faculty, and staff
- Administrative and academic departments, divisions, and spaces
- To city, region, and nation
- To post-graduate life
Question 2: Which challenges facing higher education affect CC the most?
In considering primary threats to higher education: finances, demographics, access, digital knowledge, relevance, and capacity for change, you identified CC’s incapacity to change as the most serious challenge, impeding initiatives to address the other most serious threats, our financial model and access.
The areas for action and their primary components are available here. We encourage you to read the complete report and become familiar with the work of Project 2024 year one. Here’s what will happen next:
Project 2024 Year 2
- Move from “talk to action.”
- Summer 2022: Committee draws ideas for action from the nearly 80 summary discussions from year one.
- All faculty and staff will be invited via email to submit additional ideas about the specific action areas laid out in the report.
- Staff will be invited to participate in “what if …” conversations early this summer.
- Students will receive a survey asking about their ideas and their interest in serving on working groups in year two.
- Continued idea generation takes place at Fall Conference and Faculty Forum.
In the fall, we’ll evaluate and consolidate the ideas generated over the summer and by the start of the 2022-23 academic year, we will be positioned to assess proposals and present them for approval by Spring 2023.
Thank you for engaging in this important work.
Sincerely,
