Division Norms

Student Affairs Intranet Division Norms

The values we seek to embody and live every day.

  1. Meaningful Inclusion: Moving Toward Equity
    1. How does Student Affairs actively support all student identities?
    2. How can we recognize and address barriers experienced by underrepresented students and colleagues?
    3. How do we find deliberate ways to build inclusion and equity in our staff and student experience?
  2. Strategic Collaboration
    1. How do we make it our norm that SA departments are aligning efforts and working towards shared goals with one another and with campus partners?
    2. How do these collaborations improve the student experience at Duke?
  3. Health, Wellness & Safety
    1. How do our decision-making processes and collaborations prioritize the health, wellness and safety of the student community?
    2. How do we employ data assessment and research to inform our efforts?
    3. How do we make the case for more proactive investment in a healthy community?
  4. Continuous Growth & Skill Development
    1. How do we create a culture where our teams share learning and support ongoing skill development?
    2. How can we provide constructive feedback to each other to encourage growth?
  5. Professionalism, Mutual Respect, and Trust
    1. How can we model respect and professionalism through our actions?
    2. How do we constructively disagree and then come together once decisions are made?

Health, wellness and safety.

Explore on-demand webinars and presentations.

Stone Soup Groups

The purpose of these groups is to provide Student Affairs staff space to:

  • Process living and working in the COVID 19 impacted environment
  • Build resiliency
  • Foster connectedness

Stone Soup Groups

Group Structure

  • Initial groups meet 3 times, one time per week
  • Cross-departmental
  • Confidential
  • Configured to avoid direct supervisory relationships in same group
  • Less than 10 people
  • Facilitated by Duke University School of Medicine staff volunteers

 

Group Guidelines

  • Observe deep confidentiality. What is said in the group should not be passed on to others who are not in the group. Our trust in each other depends on knowing that what we say here will not be passed on to others without our explicit permission.
  • Be present, as fully as possible. It is our attention to each other that creates the space for deep listening and the creation of meaning. Please minimize distractions to allow yourself to be fully present. Find a quiet and private place in your home for our time together, close out of email, please silence cellphones and put them away. Explore ways of offering your full attention, even on Zoom.
  • Speak your truth, and respect that other people’s truth may be different than yours. Speak from your own perspective, using “I” statements rather than “you” or “we”.
  • No fixing, saving, advising, or correcting. This is an invitation to speak from our own experience and hear from each other—we can make room for each person’s experience without trying to improve or help them.
  • Communicate respect for one another by taking turns speaking. No one is ever required to speak, and may pass on any question or query. Please allow for silence—give yourself time to reflect and pause.
  • Set aside judgment to listen to yourself and others more openly. When judgment arises, see if you might wonder about the other person’s experience. “I wonder what brought him to that belief?” or “I wonder what this reaction says about me?”
  • Please welcome each other’s contributions and perspectives as a source of learning and growth, even when your experience is very different. Share the time, so that no one voice dominates and so there is plenty of time for each person to be heard

Footnotes:

*These guidelines are adapted from Parker Palmer’s Circles of Trust.

**Each group might add or expand on guidelines as needed for that particular group.