Letter to Members from Ombudspersons

January 26, 2025 • By Joan Harrison and Linda Luz-Alterman

Dear Fellow MIP Members,

As your MIP ombuds, we have become aware of a growing need for a space at MIP where members can meet to reflect and talk about matters of concern to them or issues that have been on their mind. We have been in numerous MIP gatherings this past year which have given us the opportunity to reflect deeply on the sentient life of our institute. The Town Halls broke long-standing silence and opened up important conversations that had never occurred publicly at MIP. At the December 2023 and January 2024 Town Halls, members spoke candidly about power dynamics as well as feelings of exclusion and other hurts experienced at MIP. At the February 2024 Board meeting, we facilitated a conversation on the idea of an ‘ethics of care,’ and Board members and others present brought up matters that usually go unspoken in our gatherings. At a Spring Faculty Development Seminar on ethics, a discussion about a complicated classroom vignette sparked a lively conversation about the complexity of teaching and how faculty might be better supported in their work.

In these different settings, we noticed that when given the opportunity to speak, members welcome the invitation and make good use of it. In doing so, they demonstrate trust in our community and implicitly invite others to join them. These observations support our belief that our community could benefit from a dedicated space for listening and processing our experiences, past and present, at MIP and, in doing so, contribute to a more cohesive and responsive professional home for everyone.

To respond to this, we are offering something new at MIP in the New Year. It will be a Listening and Sharing Space where all are welcome and where you can bring situations that you encounter at MIP that weigh heavily upon you and that you have not been able to share elsewhere. We invite you to join us in a four-session confidential group on Zoom where we will work together to discover how such a space could help us reflect on whatever pain and concerns that we are currently carrying. This experience represents a new effort to prioritize our commitment to create and sustain an ‘ethical community of care’ in which every voice matters. Such a space can help us as individuals as well as help create a more connected and vibrant community.

We plan to offer this group later this spring, likely May and June, and we will provide more information as it gets closer to that time. The group will be limited to 8 participants in this initial endeavor and, for this first group, we will meet for four sessions on a Tuesday night, every other week. We hope you will consider joining us in this new undertaking at that time. It is our expectation that this will be the first in a series of groups where members, candidates, and fellows can share their experiences and concerns and in turn listen to the concerns of others.

We will be in touch.

Your Ombuds,
Joan Harrison and Linda Luz-Alterman
joanwharrison@gmail.com
luzalterman@gmail.com