Over the course of the past year, our college community worked on a new vision for CEOAS — one that is meaningful and inspiring to us, one that will help keep us motivated when the going gets tough.
I am so pleased to share with you the culmination of that visioning project, a statement that encapsulates what we are and what we do:
We are a community that embodies innovation, inspiration, and impact, united and emboldened by urgency to better understand our changing planet and collaboratively develop and communicate lasting solutions that shape a more vibrant future for all.
Some of these words carry special meaning for us:
We value the fact that we are a community, working together, holding each other up, enabling success for everyone.
We educate, we carry out research, and we engage with those interested in and affected by the outcomes of our research. And these three components are intertwined in innovative, inspiring and impactful ways so that pursuit of each component strengthens the other two.
We want to move forward in a united way, and we know that we have to be bold, because there has never been more urgency to further our understanding of how the Earth works and use this improved comprehension to shape a vibrant future for all beings.
We fully understand that achieving this vision will take hard work, creativity and holistic approaches to combine understanding of the natural environment and the human dimensions of our work. It will take transdisciplinary approaches to create truly deep engagement with the vitality — and the vulnerabilities — of the Earth system. It will take using our left analytical brain along with the right creative brain to bring together — on equal footing — different ways of knowing to create lasting solutions.
It will take innovation and inspiration to create impact. We are ready!
