Bringing Community Psychology Home: The Leadership, Community and Values Initiative

Abstract

Workplaces are amongst the most influential settings in the lives of adults and community psychologists have long been interested how to foster environments that are empowering, provide a sense of community, and support diversity. Yet, despite the fact that many community psychologists work in academic settings, there is a dearth of research that examines universities as work environments, both for faculty and staff members. This paper presents a case study of an initiative at the University of Washington, the Leadership, Community, and Values Initiative that is used a collaborative process to assess the workplace environment and effect positive changes. It is hoped that a description of key aspects of the assessment and efforts toward workplace improvement will serve as a call to community psychologists to turn more of their attention to an important setting that affects many of us, and virtually all of our students.