What is the Garnet Collaborative?

It’s an action-oriented approach to creating a shared community that allows students, faculty, and staff to build upon and expand meaningful relationships across our campus.

It’s a vehicle to achieving the aspirations, articulated by President Smith, of strengthening our shared governance, appreciating varying perspectives, and establishing a foundation of trust and mutual respect.

It’s an answer to the question: How can we work together to create a more caring, inclusive, and empathetic campus community? But, for the Garnet Collaborative to work, we need you to get involved.

Why should you care?

When our differences are exploited, we are more easily driven apart, and more readily disregard each other’s humanity. This is a global challenge, one to which our campus is not immune. By working together, we can build a stronger College community based on the ideas, values, and aspirations of our students, faculty, and staff.

How will it work?

The Garnet Collaborative will provide space for students, faculty, and staff from various backgrounds and who hold varying perspectives to come together and not only talk about what it means to live in community, but also conceptualize creative ways to improve that experience. The process will be a collaborative, action-oriented experience aimed at identifying and implementing ideas that bring about meaningful change.

Get involved!

The Garnet Collaborative will feature campuswide pop-up events that are open to the whole community. Stay tuned for a schedule of upcoming Garnet Collaborative events.

Want to go deeper? Great! The Garnet Collaborative Gatherings will bring together students, faculty, and staff who will commit to meeting four times during the course of the spring semester in small groups of 10-15. The individuals in these groups will deepen relationships within their respective cohorts while they work together toward generating actionable ideas designed to do the same for the broader campus community.

These gatherings will take place on: 

• Wednesday, Feb. 5
• Wednesday, Feb. 26
• Wednesday, April 8
• Monday, May 4

If you’re interested in signing up for the Garnet Collaborative Gatherings, more information is available here. Please keep in mind that space is limited. Please share this with members of our community who may not regularly use email.

Join the Garnet Collaborative

Each of us contributes to this community.  We need your involvement to ensure that Swarthmore fosters an environment in which we all can thrive and learn from each other. Help bring about substantive change at Swarthmore by participating in the Garnet Collaborative.

Sincerely,
Jim Terhune
Vice President and Dean of Students
Sarah Willie-LeBreton
Provost and Dean of the Faculty
Professor of Sociology