Let me take this chance to begin to share in greater detail this exciting endeavor and invite feedback and questions from you that can help further a common understanding among all of us. K ey faculty and administrative leaders in our College are convinced that a new order of thinking needs to be present for us to continue to improve our programs and enhance our chances for increasing success in the future. A similar systems approach must extend to the structures, processes, and relationships we have within our organization for it to become more adaptive to changing situations and environments. This means we must create an environment that brings people together who share a common passion about a particular issue so that they can work together to create the future we look forward to. Learning is more a function of critical thinking than being right.
Purposeful experimentation is more important than predictive planning.
T hese are three basic guidelines, if taken by the heart by those of us in the college, can make a profound difference in the way we approach our responsibilities, in the way we interact and relate to each other and our many partners, and in the way we extend our discoveries to others within the College and beyond. It is critical that we work to create a common understanding of this new culture, to strengthen our organizational environment and improve our efforts. In an effort to help clarify the dimensions of this cultural change, let me tell you a little more about what each of these new guiding principles means. Questions are more compelling than answers. If we embrace this culture of experimentation successfully, we will create more questions than answers.