MICA Community of Care

What is a Community of Care?

We all know what it means to care for other people—the families we were born into, the families we make

What does it mean for an institution to care? What does care mean in an art and design school where, even more than other schools, emotion is primary to the work?

Institutions are made of people. This institution, MICA, is fortunate in its makeup. Many of us have close, long, and loyal relationships with other members of the campus community. Those relationships create the MICA we love. They carry us through our days.

Of MICA’s ten tenets, the seventh is:  We model a community of care. The Tenets are designed to “undergird MICA’s culture, personality and actions.”

What does it mean to be a Community of Care?   The work of care becomes clearer with an understanding of the verb.

Care: To be interested, concerned; to look after and provide for the needs of others

It means that we look out for each other, that we take an interest in and work to address the physical, emotional, and health and safety wellbeing of all community members. The needs of one are often the needs of many, and they call for work by more than one department.

The Community of Care Committee, an cross-campus team of faculty, students, and staff that encourages mutual care and works to ensure the communal well-being of the MICA community. Our job is to empathetically listen to the needs of the community and find ways to address them.

This website is meant to be a type of community center—come here to play, to give and receive, to be a community. It is in constant conversation with other MICA websites and locations, fed by offices and groups and individuals across campus.

It is also a place to come with your ideas and feelings, a place to be heard.