Message From the Chancellor (COVID-19 March 31, 2020 8:07 p.m.)

The VUCA world

Dear TWU Community,

I hope this message finds you well on this last day of March.

Speaking of “last,” a question on many minds is, “how long is this going to last?” Students write hoping I might have a crystal ball—I don’t—to help them make decisions about housing, dissertation defense dates, and final grades. Faculty are planning their syllabi, wondering if the next round in the course rotation will need to be online. Administrators and staff are planning new events, new dates for postponed ones, or the point at which they pull the trigger on canceling already planned events. It’s not easy living with uncertainty.

I have been talking about the VUCA—volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous—world for many years now. My response to living in such a world has been greater agility and focusing attention on the present. I always tell guests who visit Belgium with me that if we wait for the rain to end, we might waste valuable time and may even miss the beauty of the rain. Similarly, I have been telling students rather than wait for those more ideal circumstances to come around, make the best of what you have now. As the doctoral-faculty mantra goes, the best dissertation is a done one.

Dr. Fuqin Liu, associate professor in the College of Nursing, did not wait for change. She made change happen. She knows the needs of healthcare workers and the bureaucratic hurdles in hospitals, so before the region even had shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), she was raising money for its purchase. She organized a volunteer network that used the popular Chinese social media platform WeChat to raise over $100,000, committed 100% of it to buying PPE, negotiated with global suppliers, and prepared to distribute the supplies, which arrived in Dallas today. I am inspired by Dr. Liu’s leadership and heart for service that is unmistakable on her KRLD radio interview yesterday.

To practice more of a present focus myself while also being social, I am going to join the “Breathe It All In” experience hosted as a live event on Thursday, April 2, at 9:00 AM via the International Women’s Foundation Instagram page. I will leave you today with some chill music from Uganda.

With pioneering spirit,

Carine M. Feyten, Ph.D.
Chancellor and President

P.S. For the latest information, check out TWU’s COVID-19 webpage.

Bobi Wine / Nubian Li (1:52 min of coronavirus and chill from Uganda)

Page last updated 10:51 AM, September 13, 2024