Menah's Meditations

Menah's Meditations

This year, from time to time, I’ll be sharing meditations --  thoughts and ideas about life and living in a complex and complicated society -- in this little corner of the website.  As we navigate our Hokie community, I’ll reflect on ways to push boundaries, challenges ourselves, have fun, educate ourselves, and sometimes just get though the days.  Check back often, and also check out our calendar of events and newsletter. 

The new academic year is an opportunity to think about how as a campus we continue to advance InclusiveVT, the institutional and individual commitment to Ut Prosim (that I may serve) in the spirit of community, diversity, and excellence.  The four pillars of InclusiveVT are sustainable transformation, representational diversity, campus climate, and academic mission. 

This year, I urge us as a campus to focus on sustainable transformation, and ensuring that our structures, policies, procedures, processes, and practices are sustainable, embedded in our culture and the way of doing business, living, and learning at Virginia Tech. I encourage us to continue to bring an equity lens to our work as leaders, as faculty, as staff, as students.  An equity lens provides an opportunity to exercise an additional level of consciousness around decision-making, around community-building, and around our structures, committees, and organizations.  It is an opportunity to add a layer of thoughtfulness about taken-for-granted assumptions that everything is fine for everyone.  Ultimately, I hope we can challenge ourselves to stretch beyond the existing boundaries of familiarity, of comfort, and convenience. 

I hope this year that our community will take time to participate in diversity education and engagement programming to enhance our understanding of the complexity of human identity and strategies (words and tools) for navigating spaces of discomfort.  I hope all of us will explore the opportunity to stretch the boundaries of our traditional friendship communities, reaching out and stepping into spaces with those that have shared and different identities.  The delightful opportunity of a university is to create dynamic, interesting, and fascinating connections, and to discover the richness of people, personalities, and perspectives.  Join me in pushing boundaries this year.

 Let’s Ut Prosim, together,

Menah

Menah’s Meditation: On Endings and Beginnings

“The end is where we start from.” – T.S. Eliot

Once again, we find ourselves at the end of the fall semester and calendar year. It seems like January 1 was so long ago, and I am sure so much has changed for so many of us over the past twelve months.

Sitting in my office reflecting on this moment, there is so much to be grateful for: our faculty and staff for their tireless commitment to our Principles of Community and InclusiveVT, the individual and institutional commitment to Ut Prosim (That I May Serve) in the spirit of community, diversity, and excellence. I’m grateful for their engagement in campus workshops, initiatives, and programs as part of their professional development, curiosity, and desire to ensure a positive campus climate for everyone. I appreciate our leadership, including the president, provosts, deans, vice-presidents, and vice provosts, for their unwavering support of the important work of inclusion, belonging, and community. 

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