Campus Community,

One of my priorities as president of Oklahoma City University is to review and reinvigorate our institution’s core values. Core values are essential to supporting the mission of the university, giving shape to our institutional culture, and forming a common foundation for all decision making and interactions. In short, core values reflect and reinforce the heart of the university.

Like many great institutions of higher learning, OCU has a rich tradition of academic excellence, student success, and community leadership and engagement. As we continue our mission to create, lead, and serve, it is vital that all members of the OCU community know and embody our core values and that our core values appropriately reflect and support the mission of the university. Currently, the university observes a set of core beliefs and values established during a prior strategic planning process dating back to 2002. In order to review and update our virtue framework, I have established an ad hoc committee representative of faculty, staff, students, trustees, and alumni.

The OCU Core Values Ad Hoc Committee is charged with gathering, reviewing, and synthesizing information about our institutional core values from all university constituents and resources. Informed by this feedback, the ad hoc committee will develop a set of core values and value statements to present to the university leadership team for endorsement. The final product of the ad hoc committee’s work will serve as the cornerstone for all university decisions, initiatives, and actions.

I have selected our Vice President for Human Resources, Ms. Joey Croslin, to serve as the administrative liaison for this key initiative. Representatives from each academic and non-academic unit have been appointed by their leadership to participate on this committee. Student, trustee, and alumni representatives have also been chosen to participate on the committee. If you have been chosen by your leadership to serve on this committee, you have my full support and thank you in advance for your service. For the remainder of our campus community, when the time comes, I encourage you to participate to the extent possible as requested by the committee. You are the OCU community and your voice matters.

Vice President Croslin and the ad hoc committee will meet within the next few weeks to begin their important work. Please be on the lookout for further updates about this initiative throughout the coming months.


Martha A. Burger
President