Friday Focus: Working together and confronting a changing world
July 24, 2020
— by Keith Champagne, vice chancellor for student affairs
On July 18, 2019, I wrote a Friday Focus entitled “Heroic Leadership." At that time, I called for university leaders to become heroic leaders and to confidently innovate, adapt to and embrace a changing landscape as we prepared to deal with an agreed-upon $70 million dollar cut to the university.
I never imagined this year we would be adapting to a global pandemic and confronting a changing world. In order to make sense of what we are dealing with, researchers have devised the following acronyms: VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) and TUNA (turbulent, uncertain, novel and ambiguous).
Here at UAF, the university’s core leadership team is focusing on the way forward. We are developing effective strategies in the face of uncertainty and we are institutionalizing strategic foresight. We continue to work together to harness the special talents, gifts, experiences, expertise and multiple intelligences of those in leadership positions to build a dynamic connection and/or bridge between planning and operations.
Consequently, I am honored and proud to be serving with a chancellor who is visionary and courageous, a Core Cabinet, Incident Management Team, on-site operations team, and university governance groups to restart the university in a secure and safe manner while creating a holistically safe and healthy environment for all members of the university community. We are all working with the promise-the-practice of strategic foresight, which provides us with the capacity to sense, shape, and adapt to this change as it continues to happen. We continue to plan, anticipate, with a focus on scenario planning, contingency planning, and tabletop exercises as we continue to navigate and negotiate uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. We are anticipating the future and the new possibilities while remaining present and resilient.
Moreover, we are making probabilistic predictions about the future in areas of the university such as academic affairs, research, student affairs, enrollment management, eCampus, athletics, administrative services, and rural, community and Native education. We are engaging in trend analysis to consider the potential influence of patterns of change that are already visible economically, socially, and politically. We are considering how these will affect and impact the university as we continue to advance our research, grow our enrollment, manage our budget, fundraise, develop new communications, marketing and branding strategies, and maintain our status as a world-class research-flagship-top-tier institution.
Furthermore, we have been working remotely at the university for well over 120 days and continue to be a highly functioning world-class institution because of our people, who are Zooming from sunup to sundown to continue to make the University of Alaska Fairbanks a great place and space to be for years to come. Our days have not been easy and our nights have been sleepless in Alaska. Nevertheless, we remain united to survive financially and thrive with our academic reputation intact. We are still demonstrably committed to excellence in academics, research, administration, student affairs and rural, community and Native education.
As we continue to move forward together with our eyes on the present and our minds on the future, I ask that we continue to love, care for, support and help one another to stay strong, stay focused, stay safe, stay healthy, stay together and to stay unified, positive, optimistic and hopeful. A new day and a better day is over the horizon.
Peace, Love and Blessings!
Friday Focus is a column written by a different member of UAF’s leadership team every week. On occasion, a guest writer is asked to contribute a column.