Weitzman is committed to creating a learning environment in which all students, faculty, and staff members feel valued. As a school whose faculty, students, alums, and friends have strengthened communities around the world through visual culture and the built environment, we recognize the profound importance of contributions from individuals with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Equal opportunity and a global outlook are foundational to the fulfillment of our mission and values.
Weitzman Engagement + Community (WE+C) | Our Why and Mission
Our Why
A strong community is essential to teaching, learning, research, and creative practice. We believe that all members of the Weitzman community should feel welcomed, valued, respected, and connected. By creating opportunities to learn, build relationships, and care for one another, we strengthen our community and support an environment where everyone can thrive.
Community building at Weitzman takes many forms, including opportunities for shared dialogue, collaboration, learning, service, and engagement across the school and university. WE+C provides a platform for these efforts, creating opportunities and spaces for members of our community to connect, learn from one another, and contribute to a culture of care and respect.
Our Mission
WE+C fosters a culture of belonging across the Weitzman School by building community, strengthening relationships, and developing the knowledge, skills, and practices that support a welcoming environment for faculty, staff, and students.
Weitzman Engagement + Community (WE+C) | Cultural Humility and Attunement
Cultural Humility
Cultural humility is an important foundation for how we approach community building at Weitzman. Rather than viewing cultural understanding as something that can be mastered, cultural humility calls for an ongoing process of learning, reflection, and relationship-building.
Tervalon and Murray-García (1998) described cultural humility as a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique, addressing power imbalances, and developing mutually beneficial partnerships with communities. This approach recognizes that meaningful engagement requires openness to learning from others, awareness of our own assumptions and experiences, and a willingness to listen, reflect, and adapt.
Attunement
Attunement guides how we listen, understand, and connect with one another at Weitzman. Attunement is the practice of paying careful attention to ourselves and to the experiences, perspectives, and needs of others. It involves listening with curiosity, recognizing how our own assumptions and experiences shape our understanding, and remaining open to perspectives that may differ from our own.
Brodkin and Pallathra, in Missing Each Other: How to Cultivate Meaningful Connections, describe attunement as becoming most powerful when we seek to understand one another and foster mutual responsiveness. Understanding another person also begins with understanding ourselves, including the patterns and responses we bring to our relationships.
Weitzman Engagement + Community (WE+C) | Our Approach
Our Approach
Build Capacity
Develop the knowledge, awareness, and skills needed to create a learning and working environment in which all faculty, staff, and students feel welcomed, valued, respected, and a strong sense of belonging.
Build Relationships
Create opportunities for meaningful connection across the school and university, strengthening relationships among faculty, staff, and students through shared dialogue, collaboration, and engagement.
Build Community
Foster a culture of care, respect, and shared responsibility that supports a stronger, more connected Weitzman community.
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