This fall, I have had the chance to participate in not just one or two, but four different book clubs. Elsewhere in this newsletter (and the next few newsletters), you’ll see a report from the PROSPECT S-STEM book study team about the Delivering Promise book we are reading together (written by Xueli Wang, one of our national advisory board members). Two of the other books studies I’m part of this fall have been focused on books by adrienne maree brown (name is all lowercase): Holding Change and Emergent Strategy. One of the concepts in both of these books by brown is to consider group relationships and trust in terms of “fractals.” Those of you in mathematics likely have a mathematical conception of fractals, you likely think of fractals in the way they are defined on their Wikipedia page: “A fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole... fractals are infinitely self-similarly iterated.”
brown applies the concept of fractals to group trust and group relationships, asserting that the way to build group trust is to iteratively build it on an increasingly dense network of relationships among pairs of group members. Put another way, a group as a whole can’t have a singular relationship. Rather, pairs of group members each have professional relationships with each other. The collective trust of the group is only as strong as the trust between any two group members. Thus, a way to strengthen group trust is to devote more time to nurturing the relationships among individuals in the group.
Nurturing group relationships and trust is central to S-STEM partnerships (or any research project, or, broadly, any team project). Some of the ways we have sought to build these relationships in PROSPECT include setting aside time at the start of each meeting to check in with each other and get to know something about each other. We also have a set of About Us slides where we invite all PROSPECT members to share some photos and information about themselves as well as how you like to work on collaborative projects. We encourage everyone to create or update your slide, and then to take some time to peruse others’ slides--getting glimpses into each other’s lives outside of academia is another way to build relationships. We are just launching a Shout Out form, to provide us with a way to recognize the (potentially hidden) efforts of others related to PROSPECT (or our local S-STEMs, or really anyone you want to shout out). Academic culture does not always prioritize celebrating successes--we often are just pressed for more/move on to the next thing. Taking time to express appreciation for each other--to show that we notice what they are doing--is another way we can deepen our relationships.
We also have a set of group norms that we originally created in fall 2022. In reading brown’s books and also taking part in the online asynchronous professional development Whiteness at Work, I’ll be proposing some updates to our norms in spring 2025, starting with talking about them as “community agreements” instead of “norms,” because we want these to represent what we are agreeing to do and how we are agreeing to be with each other, which may or may not reflect the norms to which we are accustomed. A feature of community agreements is that we document them in a dynamic fashion and regularly review them. We did create these norms/agreements as a group, but our group has experienced some changes in membership since then, so we want newer members to also have a voice in our agreements. I have been remiss in not having us more regularly review our community agreements, so I’m inviting everyone to be part of ongoing discussions and revisions, as we collectively review what we have, see what is still working for us, see what we want to add, and bring this up on our collective meeting agendas more regularly in the future.
The dominant culture in the U.S. pushes us to focus on tasks and productivity. Within PROSPECT, we have been trying to resist this by focusing on partnerships, on community cultural wealth, and on learning from each other. I appreciate this group and am looking forward to continuing to deepen our group trust, one relationship at a time. I hope everyone has a fantastic end to their fall term and has a restful and restorative winter break!