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Culture Workgroup

Recommendations for the culture workgroup are focused on striving for cultural change to positively impact the mental health and emotional well-being of our campus. Culture can be the most difficult and slowest area to impact. It requires buy-in and commitment from the individuals who make up our Miami community. It is also the area with the fewest measurable, actionable recommendations, but instead primarily poses topics for discussion and exploration over time

All of the culture recommendations are related to the whole university.

Recommendations related to all campuses
Recommendation Update Status Completion Date
#1: Continue to tackle and reduce stigma associated with mental health challenges and with seeking care, with an eye to specific populations where this might be more commonly felt.

#2: Facilitate campus/ departmental/ organizational conversations about our campus culture:

  • How do we create a true culture of care and a sense of appreciation?
  • How do we balance our messaging about and pressure regarding the glorification of “busy”? In other words, how can we avoid a “culture of busyness” (Waytz, 2023) to allow people to move at their own pace without the fear that they will be judged as less serious or less committed?
  • How can we encourage Miamians to sustain their energy to excel in the long-term rather than pushing to the point of exhaustion or burnout? 
  • How do we support populations that carry more pressure or stress, related to their identities, their work roles, their location, or other subcultures within our community?
 Complete
#3: Identify Miami systems and processes that create stress for students and employees (e.g., registration) and simplify where possible. Not yet started
#4: Encourage communication practices that foster wellness (e.g., no emailing during the night, scheduling the sending of emails, setting and sharing explicit communication expectations, encouraging designated “no meeting days” in departments, etc.). Not yet started
#5: Convene a representative group to examine the practicalities and implications of instituting "wellness days" during the academic calendar. This group will provide a recommendation and clear rationale for why wellness days should or should not be implemented at Miami. Not yet started
#6: Encourage departments to create opportunities for increased in-person and informal engagement among their teams and between students and faculty and staff to establish camaraderie and bolster morale and well-being. Not yet started
#7: Assess how many people are on campus in person each day and how that affects culture amongst departments and the impacts on students. Consider how to balance employee flexibility with the camaraderie that often helps us sustain
our wellness.		 Not yet started
#8: There is an understanding that other forms of wellness, such as physical or occupational wellness, have an impact on our emotional wellness. In time, it would be useful to expand this conversation to include other dimensions of wellness. Not yet started

 Updated January 29, 2024