We must know what's essential and what we can safely let go. We must be very clear in our thoughts and consistent in our actions and be able to articulate our rationale to the constituencies we serve. This is especially important if they're to understand and support us-as they must if we're to survive. The Maryland CES has adopted as its guiding philosophy the values, beliefs, and goals described in Figure 1. It's not something we defined and then put aside.
Every statement has implications for action.
We think it goes beyond targeting our programs to people's many informational needs to attending to their diverse learning styles. We think it means getting to know people who are different-spending time with them, truly listening to them, and sharing ourselves. And, we could go on with implications of all the other statements. He went through it, paragraph by paragraph, and explained something about why each was important from his viewpoint-and invited faculty to do the same from theirs. The first sentence in the statement has been used to develop specific indicators for judging plans of work on the basis of relevance, quality, and utility.