Forward Together
Our path to a campus where every student thrives.
Forward Together is our shared commitment to pursuing excellence for our students and for each other. By aligning our work and resources, we will maximize our impact. Together, we invest in our students, and we invest in each other!
Patricia A. Perillo, Ph.D., Vice President for Student Affairs
Strategic Commitments
We Put Students First
We provide resources to co-create an inclusive, innovative community where students thrive.
We empower and challenge students to cultivate their well-being, empathy, resilience, civic engagement, and advocacy. We support the holistic development of students through curricular and co-curricular learning experiences that enhance their sense of purpose, belonging, and lifelong success.
We Invest in Our People
Our staff is our most valuable resource in achieving our vision, fulfilling our mission, and living up to our values.
To ensure that our staff feel a sense of belonging and purpose, we commit to investing in them in three key areas: health and well-being; supervisor empowerment and accountability; and
professional growth, development, and advancement.
We Create Caring and Inclusive Communities
Our goals coalesce around four key areas to transform organizational culture and behavior within the division.
These areas are culture, climate, and community building; recruitment and retention; infrastructure; and learning and development. Focusing on these four areas is critical to integrating this work into all that we do.
We Thrive as One Division
Collaboration across departments and teams creates strategic advantages for resource access and better connects us to each other and our work.
Partnerships and cooperation among our departments maximize the quality and cohesiveness of student outcomes, as each department's mission helps students thrive.
We Align Our Practices with Our Values
Cohesive policies, processes, and procedures support and reflect the work and values of the division.
They provide direction to ensure our operations are consistent, equitable, and transparent. We will establish and maintain these essential tools.
We Strengthen Our Foundations
Our physical and financial infrastructures are the agents that provoke, speed, or halt significant change.
We must continually evaluate our systems and services to create a conduit for equitable, sustainable, and community-driven progress across the division.
Terps Learn Everywhere
The Student Affairs Difference
The Division of Student Affairs makes the difference between getting a college degree and getting an education. It’s where students figure out not just what they want to do in the world, but who they want to be. It’s the difference between succeeding in the classroom and thriving for life. Student Affairs helps students come into their own and build strength—because solving the grand challenges of our time requires courage, resilience, and self-knowledge.
Through co-curricular learning experiences we deliver outside the classroom, our students learn to:
- Engage Inquisitively: Terps engage with curiosity and innovation.
- Practice Compassion: Terps seek to understand, then act with care.
- Act with Courage: Terps do brave things.
- Work for Justice: Terps work toward equity for all.
Our Process
Our planning process was inclusive and iterative. It was fueled by the diverse experiences and perspectives of our DSA staff, student leader alumni, families, and students. And, it was grounded in our vision, mission and values.
Over nearly a year, we held multiple gatherings to capture frank and thoughtful feedback from staff across the division. This feedback shaped our plan's strategic commitments. Staff volunteered to serve on working groups that further defined each commitment's goals and objectives. Our final plan reflects our collective insight and our path forward together.
Grounding Beliefs
- We believe that all Student Affairs staff are educators.
- We know that it takes every member of Student Affairs to ensure that students learn and develop in healthy and whole ways.
- We understand student success holistically.
- We infuse our work with diversity, equity, inclusion and justice principles and ethics.
- We center our work on all students: undergraduate and graduate students.
Committees
We Put Students First
Co-Chairs:
- Mary Kate Crawford (RecWell)
- Joann Prosser (OVPSA)
Committee:
- Erica Ely (Career Center)
- Kamrie Risku (The Stamp)
- Maria Berbery (Counseling)
- Marnie Marsh (ADS)
- Pearl Lo (The Stamp)
- Pierre Campbell (Res Life)
- Rocio Berenice Fregoso-Mota (Thrive Center)
- Sarah Wilson (UHC)
- Wallace Eddy (RecWell)
Past Members:
- Courtney Holder (The Stamp) - Inaugural Co-Chair
- Pam Scott - Graduate Assistant
We Invest In Our People
Co-Chairs:
- Earl Cabellon (OVPSA)
- Tiffany Gaines-Ekwueme (Res Life)
Committee:
- Vassie Hollamon (DRF)
- Tami Lee (RecWell)
- Marinel Martinez-Benyarko (The Stamp)
- Julia Matute-Kumbalasiri (UHC)
- Malia Witherspoon (C&VS)
We Create Caring and Inclusive Communities
Co-Chairs:
- Yvette Lerma-Jones (OVPSA)
- Nicole Mehta (DRL)
Committee:
- Members of Student Affairs Diversity Initiative
We Thrive As One Division
Co-Chairs:
- Natalie Taylor (RecWell)
- Dai-An Tran (OVPSA)
Committee:
- Mary Kate Crawford (RecWell)
- Mike Fry (Dining)
- Angela Jackson (DRF)
- Tony Randall (DEI)
- Rainer Tandaju (RecWell)
- Veronica Turcios (Dining)
We Align Practices With Values
Co-Chairs:
- Kate Blanch (OVPSA)
- Kalia Patricio (The Stamp)
Committee:
- Meredith Carpenter (Res Life)
- Jose Flores (DRF)
- Brent Flynn (RecWell)
- Jessica Perez (UHC)
- William Post (The Stamp)
- Bobby Smith (The Stamp)
We Strengthen Our Foundations
Chair:
- John Blackwood (DRF)
Committee for Physical Infrastructure:
- Andrea Bussler (RecWell)
- Henry Dickson (DRF)
- Nicole Miskimon (DRF)
- Mark Neal (The Stamp)
- Greg Thompson (Dining)
Committee for Financial Infrastructure:
- Lisa Amick (DRF)
- Alison Barlow (The Stamp)
- Erin Brault (Career Center)
- Ileana Kure (Res Life)
- Kristin Townes (Counseling)