Dear Faculty, Staff and Student Assistants,
Thank you to all who participated in our One Health/CSUCI for 2030+ campus forums in March. I invite everyone to the next phase of campus engagement in thinking together, asynchronously, this time, about this next strategic planning effort for our University. I am excited about CSUCI joining in a formal global effort to think about the health and wellbeing of humans, animals, plants, the broader environment, economies, and communities all intimately linked through this powerful conceptual frame. How can our campus contribute to realizing this vision in and for our region? It’s a question filled with possibility.
If you did participate in the campus forums on One Health/CSUCI for 2030+, you already have the background you need to participate in Vision Chat, so feel free to click on the link and dive right into it. Please read on for background information if you were unable to take part in those conversations to date.
Prior to engaging in any action planning, this year has been about researching, defining, and understanding a One Health vision for our next decade, initially shared in my Fall 2023 Convocation Address. I convened a President’s Select Committee in Fall 2023 to explore the concept of One Health at CSUCI and how it could be pursued through four strategies (i.e., LEAP, LUX, CORE, FAST). Informed by the Select Committee’s work, all faculty, staff, and administrators were invited to a series of campus forums in March to build shared understandings of One Health and to begin visualizing and articulating what the four strategies could mean for our campus.
Our collective success with CSUCI for 2030+ will require: (1) broad, shared understanding of concepts related to this vision, and (2) our individual ability to see how our work can connect them. This next phase of asynchronous campus engagement is intended to accomplish these two goals.
That said, I invite you to participate in a unique campus wide experience with artificial intelligence that has been designed to: (1) answer your questions about the meaning of One Health and the strategies identified for pursuing it, using results of our late Fall-early Spring research and conversations to inform AI-generated responses, (2) collect examples that showcase existing curricular and co-curricular activities and experiences related to the One Health theme and strategies, and (3) provide a shared experience in the use of AI – a technology that invites excitement and trepidation, perhaps in equal measure, and that our students need us to understand and lead in its responsible use.
Vision Chat is the name we have given to this exercise, and it is now available for all to engage with – to learn about One Health/CSUCI for 2030+ concepts and to give life to that meaning by sharing your stories that exemplify it (e.g., in what ways does your work promote human, environmental, and/or economic health? how have you gotten students involved in hands-on learning, or engaged them in learning experienced related to one or more of the unique, place-based learning assets of our region?). Through this engagement opportunity with Vision Chat, you can ask this expert AI assistant your questions and provide feedback about CSUCI for 2030+ from April 16 through May 3, 2024. Our goal is to hear from as many people as possible, even if you spend just five minutes with Vision Chat.
I invite you to engage with Vision Chat and share your thoughts, stories, and ideas via the dialogue box on that page. Additionally, there is a FAQ page with some common questions about Vision Chat technology and how your feedback will be used.
This has been a huge lift. My thanks to so many members of our campus community, including members of the President’s Select Committee; Dr. Ray Bowman, the MVS faculty member who introduced us to the ProtoBots platform we are using for Vision Chat; the entire Teaching & Learning Innovations team, especially Dr. Lorna Gonzalez, Michael McGarry, and Dean Jill Leafstedt; Jerilee Petralba; the Information Technology Services team; the Procurement team; the faculty and staff who pilot-tested Vision Chat; and members of my team in the Office of the President.
If you have questions or comments, please send them to office.president@csuci.edu.
Sincerely,
Richard Yao, Ph.D.
President