Vision: Key Concepts

Building the Capacity for Servant-Leadership

Ensure that every student receives an education that provides a distinctive, integrated student experience that fosters servant-leadership, a spirit of life-long learning, and adaptability for changing times through:

• Community Engagement
  • Develop deeper, higher-impact reciprocal relationships in the Dayton community, elevating the education of our students through experiential learning and addressing issues such as Catholic and urban education; food security, nutrition, and health; reconciliation of racial, religious, and cultural conflict; environmentally sustainable neighborhoods; and alternatives to violence.
  • Appoint "community geographers" to analyze neighborhood-based data and trends to identify and prioritize issues for our shared work.
  • Renovate Chaminade Hall and create community co-working space for non-profit community organizations; locate strategically pivotal, community-based centers; serve as a hub of student, faculty, and staff collaboration.

• Innovation, Applied Creativity, and Entrepreneurship
  • Become an anchor in the Dayton Arcade, establishing faculty and staff offices, offering courses, and jointly leading an ideation center that provides:
    • Accessibility to students, faculty, and staff pursuing venture creation and innovation.
    • Experiential learning opportunities for students from a variety of disciplines supporting others who are creating new ventures.
  • Partner with a Dayton neighborhood, local foundations, banks, economic development organizations, and regional businesses to develop a "community innovation center," an incubation site for neighborhood businesses and nonprofit ventures, with a special emphasis on women- and minority-owned concepts.
  • Develop innovative policies, practices, and incentives to empower faculty and staff who wish to pursue commercialization and venture creation.
  • Strive to become the first university in the country in which every student will take at least one course on innovation, humanity-centered applied creativity, and entrepreneurial thinking.

• Intercultural and Global Engagement
  • Increase the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of our faculty and staff, and enrich the curriculum to expand students’ intercultural competencies.
  • Grow the opportunities available for intercultural immersions and ensure that they are available to all students, no matter their financial circumstances.

• Residential and Co-Curricular Experiences
  • Infuse the Commitment to Community throughout campus life to help students develop learning and living habits that align with our Catholic, Marianist principles.
  • Maximize the impact of our unique residential context through a residential curriculum and housing strategy that fosters self-authorship, intercultural competence and skills for community living.
  • Develop, promote and sustain a campuswide culture of health and wellbeing focused on resilience, prevention, self-care and discovery of health practice.
  • Cultivate socially-responsible leadership and intercultural learning through co-curricular experiences, which provide students with the values and competencies needed to positively transform communities.