As an institution where seven schools operate relatively autonomously under the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) umbrella, how can UMB’s seven core values be applied consistently?

The 2019-2020 President’s Fellows (clockwise, from top left): Jamaad Abdi, Anicca Harriot, Meghna Bhatt, Marina Gettas, Nina Marks, and Adrienne Kambouris.

The 2019-2020 President’s Symposium and White Paper Project presented a variety of recommendations to encourage UMB and its seven schools to do just that.

“I like the idea of focusing on core values because in the end, if we make core values work right, we will make the University work right,” UMB Interim President Bruce E. Jarrell, MD, FACS, said during the May 7 presentation on Webex. “It’s not that it’s not working right now — it’s working great — but it could be much better than it’s working now, particularly around the core values.” 

The President’s Symposium and White Paper Project is a joint initiative between the President’s Office and the Office of Interprofessional Student Learning and Service Initiatives to create a yearlong conversation on a topic important to the University community, driven by the President’s Fellows.

(Watch video below.)

This year’s topic examined actionable strategies for institutionalizing the University’s core values: accountability, civility, collaboration, diversity, excellence, knowledge, and leadership. The findings are through the lens of the student population, while there may be overlap in some areas for faculty and staff.

In the students’ eyes, values and how they are applied are chiefly learned through their schools and not directly from central administration. They see a potential for sharing more information about Universitywide resources and initiatives to make the UMB experience more worthwhile. Recommendations ranged from creating new positions and groups to make sure core values are consistently implemented to updating the UMB mobile app and the SMC Campus Center.

“We feel the University has made a great effort to be very clear and explicit, but we also felt students weren’t necessarily informed,” said fellow Anicca Harriot, a biochemistry and molecular biology PhD candidate at the School of Medicine. “Something that we struggled with a lot at the beginning of this project, and even now, is ‘What is the University’s responsibility to inform us? What is our responsibility to be informed?’ A lot of the information that we found was readily available to us, and we didn’t necessarily have to go through a lot of hurdles. But if you don’t know it until you go to look for it, how well are those values really being incorporated into the culture?” 

In addition to Harriot, the 2019-2020 fellows are: Jamaad Abdi of the School of Dentistry; Meghna Bhatt of the School of Pharmacy; Marina Gettas, DPH, MPH, of the School of Nursing; Adrienne Kambouris of the Graduate School and School of Medicine; and Nina Marks of the Francis King Carey School of Law.

The fellows interviewed faculty, staff, and students while gathering data during the year, culminating in a 23-page white paper chock full of analysis of how core values are applied at each of the seven schools and UMB, coupled with recommendations for improvements.

Their work was commissioned under former UMB president and current University System of Maryland Chancellor Jay A. Perman, MD, and continued with Jarrell, who is receptive to many of the recommendations while acknowledging the collaborative environment prevents him from making certain changes unilaterally. 

One such change would pivot the core value of accountability to integrity. The fellows believe that the value of accountability focuses on the impacts of an action after the fact, and instead, the campus community should act with integrity by contemplating actions beforehand.

Kambouris said that belief was instilled in her while serving in the Army for 10 years.

“I knew ahead of time that you had to think about your actions before you take them. When I was reading about the core values and how they were implemented across the schools, it seemed like it was act first then ask questions and think how it will impact others,” she said. “If you think through your decisions prior to your actions, you already know what the potential consequences will be, and you will plan and evaluate for that.”

The fellows also recognized many of the existing positive initiatives and honors that exemplify core values, including offering a medical Spanish course (civility), Carey Law's Diversity Scholars Program (diversity), and the UMB Health Alliance initiative (knowledge), among others.

During the school year, the fellows attended a Speaker Series that included a kickoff session featuring the inaugural President’s Distinguished Scholar, Norman Augustine, MSE, retired chair and CEO of Lockheed Martin. Other speakers included Kristy Novak, MS, assistant director of graduate clinical placements for the School of Nursing, student and academic services, and president of UMB’s Staff Senate, and Oksana Mishler, RDH, MS, clinical assistant professor at the School of Dentistry and vice president of the Faculty Senate; Sharon Glazer, PhD, professor and chair, Division of Applied Behavioral Sciences at the University of Baltimore; Ashley Finley, PhD, senior advisor to the president and vice president of strategic planning and partnerships at the Association of American Colleges & Universities; and Angel Nix, president and CEO of the National Institute of Leadership & Organizational Development.

Gregory Brightbill, MBA, MEd, leadership education and involvement program specialist, applauded the students for their work.

“The students here really prepared an amazing white paper, which can act as a road map for each of us in looking at what our core values are and how we can implement them as a campus community,” Brightbill said.

Brightbill also announced during the presentation that the 2020-2021 topic will be Health Literacy as a Social Determinant of Health, and completed via the University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State (MPower).

“This is actually going to be a partnership through MPower between UMB and College Park, where eight of the students will be UMB and one will be a College Park student studying public health,” he said.  

This year’s white paper and those from prior years are available to be read on UMB’s website and on Issuu.

The fellows' main recommendations under each core value included: 

Accountability

• Conduct a student/faculty/staff climate assessment through the lens of diversity and inclusiveness.
• Each school should annually assess core values in its programming and practices.
• Change Accountability to Integrity to focus on behavior before an action is taken.
• Standardize student orientation to ensure students in each school are aware of UMB-wide resources and core values by having Division of Student Affairs/Campus Life address each orientation. 

Civility 

• Send accepted students a video highlighting UMB’s campus, student life, and core values.
• Convert Campus Center to Student Center with several programming and amenity improvements for both studying and recreation.
• Improve the UMB mobile app to become more student-friendly with push notifications, emergency alerts, and direct registration for various programming, student account information, and courses.
• Use the University Student Government Association to form UMB chapters of interest groups for collaboration to bring students from the seven schools together for common causes. 

Collaboration

• Expand interprofessional course offerings.
• All schools should investigate pay and promotion equity. 

Diversity

• Recruit and hire an associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion at each school.
• Create a symposium to display student and faculty research and other initiatives to the public. 

Excellence

• Honor a UMB student of the month, quarter, and year at the institution level.
• Make School of Social Work diversity training available to all faculty. 

Knowledge  

• Require all incoming students to take the Structural Oppression online course offered by the School of Social Work.
• Create a President’s Student Advisory Council to analyze proposed and existing policies to ensure they align with UMB core values. 

Leadership

• Create an executive director for student affairs to work directly with schools’ offices of student affairs and report directly to the UMB president.