Campus Cares Framework

UWM Culture of Care

UWM is a place where relationships come first. Our students, staff, and faculty are inspired to care for themselves and extend that care to others through compassion and empathy.

Relationships: UWM is a place where relationships come first. Our students, staff, and faculty are inspired to care for themselves and extend that care to others through compassion and empathy.

Community: At UWM, we care for others through communities of practice made up of individuals at all levels. The culture of care is a shared responsibility across campus, not limited to specific positions, offices, departments, colleges, or divisions. Our culture of care is anchored in relationships characterized by empathy, safety, and transparency.

Collaborations: We amplify existing and create new support networks to empower individual agents and communities of practice to develop a culture of care across campus. We empower UWM community members to take responsibility for self-care and to extend that care, kindness, and compassion to others through collaborative efforts that impact us all.

Wellbeing: Well-being is a positive state linked to health, quality of life, and the ability to contribute to the world with a sense of meaning and purpose. An individual’s wellness and the community and environment around them — where they live, learn, work, and play — all shape well-being.

How do we implement the Culture of Care?

Over the past three years, Campus Cares has collected information from faculty, staff, and students across the UWM community and identified the following steps to implement a culture of care. These steps include:

We strengthen and broaden our connections. Faculty, staff, and students are encouraged and supported to break down silos and operate in collaborative, cross-departmental/divisional spaces, expanding their reach across the institution.

We address and dismantle barriers to care. Every community member understands their role in identifying and increasing access to available resources.

We adopt compassionate systems, policies, and practices. We encourage departments, units, and individuals to honor their collective cultures, reach within their sphere of influence, and build (or utilize and adapt existing) tools and training to meet their unique needs in a compassionate way.

We communicate from all campus levels with honest, proactive transparency. We seek to provide opportunities for multi-directional dialogue where there is consistent communication, feedback and ongoing evaluation.

We seek ongoing feedback from all community members to ensure we are practicing empathy.

We evaluate our actions with an equity lens to consider both the experience of individual members and the potential impact on marginalized or underserved groups