Revisiting the Principles of Community (PC), part five in the series covers respect. The university webpage defines respect as seeking “to foster an open-minded understanding among individuals, organizations and groups” and supporting “this understanding through outreach, increasing opportunities for collaboration, formal education programs and strategies for resolving disagreement.”
It is very difficult to achieve other PC pieces–such as cooperation and honest and respectful expression of ideas–without respect. Have you ever been in a group where you didn’t speak up for fear of being ignored or talked over? Or that someone else would get credit for your ideas?
Teamwork and collaboration are concepts we hear about in class, student organizations and that are embedded in job postings. Most teams manage to work, on a basic level, if it’s just a group of individuals with their own tasks. However, the teams that actually respect your ideas and contributions are the ones that also respect your involvement and value as a person.
These groups are the ones you want to attend your events and participate in things with. In the classroom, these groups are also the ones that you should prioritize collaboration with. These groups also tend to be more diverse in thought, like my previous work team I have participated with, which was talked about in the previous article on diversity. The concept of teamwork thus could be used as a summary for the PC puzzle, particularly the values of diversity and respect.
One particular group that I have discovered to have excellence teamwork and collaboration is the Graduate College. When starting as a distance student, I knew that they processed administrative paperwork for graduate students and had the Center for Communication Excellence (CCE) for thesis and dissertation support. Last semester, I started to discover they had more to offer us, starting with interpersonal skills classes by Dr. Denise Vrchota, professor of teaching emerita and career workshops by Karin Lawton-Dunn, then the graduate college senior career services specialist.
This semester they started the Grad Mixer Wednesdays event series. This event has been one of my main learning experiences over the semester because I have discovered that there is quite a diverse staff in the Graduate College, and they all bring unique experiences and information to share. A big event like this takes exceptional teamwork and collaboration to put on all semester long. During this event each week, the staff is focused on respecting and serving all the graduate students who come to the event with curiosity and questions.
One of the highlights of these events was the career information supplied by Dr. Svitlana Zbarska, graduate career services lead, and her graduate assistant Ambar Melendez, a Ph.D. student in forestry. Any and all questions are welcome, encouraged and enjoyed for discussion. During the event, we have direct access to not only the various communication consultants from the CCE for professional and academic help but also the problem-solving team. The problem-solving team is also known as the Graduate College.
The Student Services team is led by Natalie Robinson, senior assistant director of academic services. Overall, the Graduate College team demonstrates the respect portion of PC through their open-minded understanding of our diverse backgrounds and unique needs, collaboration to support us through all phases of graduate education, and outreach events such as these mixer events.
One of my negative experiences with respect has come from some students within a student organization. Last fall, they gave me a timeline and ignored me when I emailed to ask about my status. This particular student organization requires students to apply for membership. I was told I would hear back two weeks after an in-person meeting. After two months, I followed up with the recruitment officer and a second officer a month later. Neither bothered to give me a response. Failing to deliver on commitments shows a lack of respect for others’ time and value.
Now, by contrast, my free time has been replaced by Student Union Board (SUB) events which are extremely fun to both attend and volunteer at. What SUB does differently to show respect for people in our community is offer opportunities for different types of events, each varying in levels of time commitment. It is extremely fun both during the event and during setup/teardown. The first, second and third rule of SUB is to have fun and that is exactly what we do!
Respect is an ideal that takes deliberate thought to ensure we include it in our everyday lives. It also feeds into other PCs since they operate together like a continuous process loop. When you give respect to those around you, they are more open to communicate with you. As a result you obtain knowledge you might not otherwise be able to find out. This also brings up the concept of walking a mile in his/her shoes and the idea about valuing the diversity of different perspectives others bring to your group. So when you are asking for a commitment from someone, respect their time and commitments which they are sharing with you, some of their limited resources.
