June 25
Huddle
A three-hour virtual opening centered values, visual storytelling, a co-created Community Agreement, design thinking, and the shared problem context.
Our Process
A structured path through productive uncertainty
The opening question can remain unfinished. Trust, shared context, and inquiry gradually shape a useful frame and a responsible next move.
How it works
What sensemaking looks like in practice
Complex institutional challenges are experienced differently across roles, units, campuses, and communities. Sensemaking creates opportunities to compare what participants are noticing, examine relevant evidence, surface assumptions, and build a more complete understanding of the conditions surrounding a challenge.
Participants develop enough shared understanding to identify promising directions. Differences, uncertainty, and open questions remain visible throughout the work.
The working cycle
Seven connected phases
The phases offer orientation and remain flexible. Learning at any point may send a team back to listen again, revise the frame, or reconsider what should be tested.
Notice and Reflect
What are we noticing?
Understand
Whose experiences and evidence do we need?
Frame
What condition are we trying to change?
Generate Ideas
What responses might fit what we learned?
Prototype
What can we test responsibly?
Test and Iterate
What happened, and what should change?
Implement and Evaluate
What support, evidence, and ownership are needed?
Return to an earlier phase when evidence, context, or understanding changes.
Equity and participation
Whose knowledge shapes the understanding?
Collective sensemaking depends on whose perspectives are present, whose knowledge is treated as credible, and whose participation is supported. The Collaboratory attends to differences in role, authority, access, and institutional experience so that shared understanding draws from perspectives across the institution, including those farther from formal decision-making.
Detailed Collaboratory sequenceSee how the Summer 2025 process unfoldedSix gatherings and follow-through
Summer 2025 and follow-through
The timeline follows the program’s learning sequence and facilitation moves across gatherings and continued support.
July 7
Intensive kickoff retreat
A full day at the Trumbull Campus used ideation stations, Lotus Blossom, How Might We, If/Then statements, and stakeholder-and-value mapping.
July 8–10
Virtual intensive
Three morning sessions combined research, Critical Friends feedback, empathy gathering, reframing, the Goldilocks Test, and Crazy 8s.
July 14, 21, and 28
Labs and change planning
Weekly labs supported asset and power mapping, success indicators, bounded change plans, coaching, and revision.
August 5
Culminating learning event
Participants reflected on values and progress, shared what they had tried and learned, gathered feedback, and clarified partnerships and next steps.
Fall 2025–Spring 2026
Post-process coaching
Written feedback, team meetings, and continued check-ins supported implementation learning and the development of sustainable infrastructure.
The process in practice
Making perspectives and patterns visible
Participants move between individual reflection, shared inquiry, and visible records of the group’s developing understanding.
Conditions for Thriving
Examine the experiences surrounding learning, contribution, and change.
The framework brings together relational and cultural, developmental and agentic, and structural and institutional conditions across student, faculty, and staff roles.
Relational & CulturalDevelopmental & AgenticStructural & Institutional
Explore the full framework How the Collaboratory supports the work
Five design commitments
These commitments shape the process through which people examine the conditions, learn across roles, and carry ideas into practice.
- Relational trust
- Relationships that support candor and intellectual risk.
- Accessible participation
- Clear expectations and multiple ways to contribute.
- Shared power
- Meaningful influence over questions, interpretations, and decisions.
- Protected learning
- Time for reflection, feedback, revision, and uncertainty.
- Implementation support
- Coaching, recognition, leadership partnership, and resources.