Burned out amidst the pandemic and searching for answers, Kevin McClure developed his vision for "The Caring University," a vision he shared in the latest College of Education and Health Professions' WE CARE Speaker Series lecture.

In his book, The Caring University: Reimagining the Higher Education Workplace After the Great Resignation, McClure provides a research-backed roadmap for transforming campus workplaces, outlining six organizational changes to create a university dedicated to helping employees thrive.

"Everything that I have learned in this research points to the need for a different approach, and it's an approach that draws on care ethics to help us reimagine some of our cultures and our structures in higher education," McClure said during his lecture.

He said care ethics can serve as the primary vehicle for change in a workplace. By adopting this approach, he believes universities and institutions can reach greater heights just by asking, "What if we had an ethical responsibility of care for the people that we employed?"

The six organizational changes McClure outlined throughout the lecture involve empowering employee voices, humanizing policies and procedures, and cultivating caring leaders.

He acknowledged the types of changes he advocates for are not always simple and that true organizational change is a journey that begins with "one single step."

McClure's lecture was a logical installment in the WE CARE Speaker Series, as one of three priorities in Dean Kate Mamiseishvili's WE CARE strategic plan for the college is to foster a caring culture that "empowers all students, faculty, staff and external stakeholders to thrive." 

"We were so excited to host Dr. McClure as part of the WE CARE Speaker Series," Mamiseishvili said. "As the college of the caring professions, his message truly resonated with us and inspired us to continue finding new ways to lead with care."

While on campus, McClure also met with some of the college's early-career faculty to answer questions about his scholarship, experience in administration and more.

McClure is a professor of higher education and chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he also serves as co-director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges. He is an expert on college leadership, management, finance and workplace culture, especially at broad-access institutions.

He concluded his talk with a call to action, hoping to inspire those in the crowd to take that first step.

"We are the university," he said. "The connections that you have to each other, the work that you do together, the way that you show up for students, the work that you do for students, that's the university."

This lecture was the fifth installment in the College of Education and Health Professions' WE CARE Speaker Series, which features lectures by prominent scholars with broad appeal across education and health. Previous WE CARE speakers have lectured on topics like adolescent e-cigarette use, building healthy habits through the Exercise is Medicine program and leadership through the lens of characters from the hit television show Ted Lasso.

Details about the next WE CARE Speaker Series lecture will be announced early in the spring semester.