Listening First: Reimagining a University From 5,000 Voices

Dr. Safiya George shares how she set out to hear from every corner of the University of the Virgin Islands community — students, alumni, custodians, faculty, elected officials, and more — during a bold listening tour that generated nearly 5,000 ideas. She describes how even small, intimate sessions sparked some of the best solutions, and why she was willing to sit down as a scribe for staff members to ensure their voices were not only heard but elevated.

It was very important to me, and coming back to my alma mater to hear from folks here about what's working well, here, about what's not working well, have difficult conversations that perhaps might not be comfortable, where there are ugly truths, are there they're better sat and they're better known.

So you can address them. As well as I also wanted to hear about what they envision for the university and what they hope the university would be and would do, and how they would contribute over the next 20 years.

And so embarking on that process, I wanted to hear from everyone. That sounds impossible, but that's what I wanted. I wanted to hear from every single person, the custodians, the groundskeepers, our technicians, our, you know, everyone within the physical plant from students, community, naysayers on every island, alumni, elected officials. I wanted to hear from everyone. My team would look at me with their eyes big and say, oh my gosh, yes, I wanted to hear from everyone, anyone that would come and have a seat at the table that we provided for them.

And so we did just that. We invited students, we invited alumni, we invited employers, we invited faculty. We invited alums, employees, everyone, everyone who would come. You know, we spoke to heads of government agencies, the governor, the director of the Virgin Islands Economic Development Authority, Commissioner of Education, our trustees of all of our boards, our board of trustees of university, our members of the board of directors of our foundation, members of directors, the directors of our Reichel Center for the Arts board, everyone.

And so in that process, we heard all sorts of things about, you know, what was not working well, why students were not satisfied, what they hoped for, what was working well. So we can do more of that. And that was important for me to do. In the end, we had almost 5000 ideas, which for our consultant was the most ideas he had ever received in any strategic planning process.

And I think what was most exciting was for the community to talk about what they envision for the university. Right. And for them to give input on what we should be doing, what we could be doing, to hear the governor's perspectives. Everyone. And then, of course, you know, really narrowing down those into themes and would focus on, what we would celebrate based on what we're already doing.

Well, and of course, a common theme was, we can't be everything to everyone and offer everything, which I think for a long time our university has been trying to do. And so that helped, of course, to affirm what some of us already knew. But using data could then help us serve as leverage to move in the direction that we needed to be, and to justify how to really prioritize resources because we do not have unlimited resources.

Honestly, my favorite session was, session that we held in a classroom upstairs from the sport and fitness center. The gym. And it was a session for employees in general. Anyone could come faculty, staff, and there were maybe there was not a large number of people in that room. Maybe 20 something.

They had the best ideas, and I could tell that there was some hesitancy from the gentleman, from [a] physical plant, to really articulate his ideas or write them down those symbols to write them down. So I became his scribe, and so I said nothing. I just my job was to write his ideas down, you know, react to them, react to hers.

And they were the best ideas. And that was powerful. And I could tell how empowered he felt. And I could see people watching me like, what is she doing? Is the president there scribing for these? For this guy? I am not too big to scribe for one of our, you know, physical plant workers. As president, I give voice to whoever needs voice.