Organizational Values

  • Students Are Our Highest Priority (serving to promote student success for all students)
  • Touching the Spirit (using a holistic approach to reach each student—Body, Mind, and Spirit)
  • Building Community (creating an environment that encourages students to be accountable to each other’s learning)
  • Connections to the African Diaspora (expanding students' cultural awareness of the diaspora and articulating their place in that experience)
  • Ethic of Love (expressing compassion and care in the learning community)
  • Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Practices (developing curriculum relevant to the students’ lives for learning)
  • Ritual (engaging in cultural practices rooted in African traditions to strengthen the community and the people within the community)
     

Organizing Principles

  • Shares a name with a core set of pedagogies and promising practices
  • Supports the academic success of all students
  • Supports the persistence and retention of all students toward defined educational goals: transfer, certificate, associate degree
  • Integrates both instructional and student services
  • Integrates direct instruction of information and technology literacy
  • Integrates sound assessment strategies and a set of core benchmark measures; includes recruitment and regular training of students, staff and faculty through seminars, conferences, and other professional development
  • Facilitates the sharing of resources: financial, curriculum, methodologies, pedagogies
  • Commits to collaborating with campuses at a local level so that there is integration of the core Umoja Community with each individual college mission, goals, strategic plan and student equity efforts

Umoja Board Adopted Strategic Plan (3-23-17)