Fall 2024 Leadership Message
Fall 2024 Leadership Message
September 10, 2024
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Hello, Cranbrook Educational Community; I am community president, Aimeclaire Roche.
As we enter this new academic year and what will undoubtedly be a busy fall for many, I want to share a few thoughts about learning, living, and working in our Cranbrook Educational Community.
The makeup of our community is as unique as the combination of academic and public-facing programs we offer here at Cranbrook.
Every day, we proudly welcome a unique and broad range of community members with diverse backgrounds, experiences, beliefs, and voices.
OUR MISSION
The Mission of Cranbrook Educational Community is that we challenge minds and transform lives.
Such a mission guides us and keeps us focused on our core reason for being.
We are Cranbrook Educational Community.
We teach – learners of all ages and backgrounds.
We teach in many different venues – in classrooms, studios, exhibition halls and galleries, through architecture, landscape and our National Historic Landmark campus, through online as well as in-person programs.
And we also aim to teach in a specific way – as some say, not what but how to think.
Exercising the skills of deep listening, of constructive discourse, and of critical thinking.
All of which are essential for grappling with complexity and, ultimately, for navigating and shaping the complex world around us.
OUR SHARED RESPONSIBILITY
To fulfill our mission, we ask everyone who participates in our intellectual and social community to commit to valuing each other’s perspectives and openly exchanging ideas.
We acknowledge that living, learning, and working within a community requires us to cooperate for the common good, even when sometimes individual compromise is necessary.
With the unique interdisciplinary and multidimensional nature of our programs—for elementary and secondary school students, graduate students, and wider public audiences who engage with our museums and programming—we encounter varying academic, cultural, scientific, and professional practices on campus every day, and we serve students of all kinds at different stages of development and learning.
As a result, campus areas dedicated to academic research, graduate studio work, and the presentation of artistic and scholarly practice provide a different context for creative and intellectual expression than those for K-12 learning.
All our program areas are guided by clear academic and program-specific policies and practices, which are adapted to the learning needs of the respective students.
Importantly, and at the same time, all are part of the same community - and all are vital to the fabric of what makes Cranbrook so unique.
In this community, each of us has a shared responsibility for creating an environment conducive to academic and creative expression and for ensuring unobstructed access for all our community members to their respective learning experiences.
CIVIL DISCOURSE
We provide all of our community members with opportunities to express themselves in a variety of ways, but they must do so in a manner that is respectful so that all those who set foot on our campus feel welcomed and valued.
This includes the opportunity in an academic environment to express and hear different points of view without threats, harassment, or disruption to our program area and Cranbrook operations and the obligation to act promptly if this type of behavior or speech finds its way into our community.
We understand that there will be opposing views on campus. The ability to disagree constructively and across differences is essential for learning and working together effectively.
Especially in an educational community like ours, Civil discourse means listening actively, responding thoughtfully, and debating respectfully.
It involves understanding that we can still respect each other even if we disagree.
It is through this cooperation and exchange that we better understand the world and each other.
To support how we work, learn, and live together in our community, we have overarching guidance and policies for the whole of Cranbrook that provide a framework for expression on campus and deeper context on our mission, values, purpose as a private non-profit educational organization.
This guidance is publicly available on our website, and we hope it will be helpful as we enter this new academic year and busy fall.
Transformational experiences at Cranbrook are possible only through the efforts of many dedicated, passionate, and hard-working students, faculty, staff, employees, volunteers, and visitors all of whom collaborate dynamically across our program areas.
Thank you for your support. I look forward to our continued dialogue as we grow and learn – together – in this academic year ahead as Cranbrook Educational Community.
