FNU invites all community members to actively participate in our Culture of Caring. A Culture of Caring fosters institutional success, growth, and longevity. When all community members exemplify caring, we enjoy a stable, productive community with less attrition of students, faculty, and staff. By clearly defining our Culture of Caring, the sense of community at FNU will grow, we will continue to succeed and prosper, and all community members will function optimally as they experience the FNU environment as trusting, safe, supportive, and happy. Collectively, we will actively promote open-mindedness about growth and change, and will all desire to continually improve by identifying our common strengths and possibilities for growth.
An example of how we promote these principles is with our Circle of Caring Award. This award recognizes faculty and staff who go above and beyond their job duties and strive to uphold FNU’s mission and Culture of Caring everyday. The Circle of Caring Award is awarded to one faculty and one staff member each term and it will be announced at the beginning of the next term. You can view a list of past nominees and winners here.
Another way that we promote these principles is through recognizing one another by using "Culture of Caring" notecards with a message of gratitude or appreciation. These cards can be requested by contacting brittney.kinison@frontier.edu, and remote employee addresses can be found here.
FNU’s Culture of Caring: A Clear Definition
FNU community members believe it is important to clearly define the Culture of Caring because we desire to share a common understanding about how best to reflect our common belief that individuals are valued, important, and worthy of respect.
The five main elements of FNU’s Culture of Caring are Professionalism, Inclusivity, Respect, Positive Communication, and Mutual Support. The five elements are defined below:
Professionalism
At FNU, we strive to nurture a desire for excellence. We are uncompromising in our commitment to quality education and to graduating competent and informed practitioners. We acknowledge the role that striving for excellence has played throughout the history of the University, and we strive to nurture this desire in our community today. Examples of how this desire for excellence is translated into our daily practice include taking extra time to patiently help others achieve their best, honestly and openly discussing elements of success both in one’s job or in one’s classes, extending ourselves to help other community members, giving positive reinforcement to others, and providing personal attention to nurture each other’s success. We are civil in all of our dealings with others, regardless of our job titles or place within the organization. We take responsibility for our actions, and act for the good of the entire FNU community. We honor FNU’s legacy and take responsibility for others as well as ourselves.
Inclusivity
Because we live within a Culture of Caring, we are inclusive and treat all community members with equality, respect and consideration, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, location of workplace, and job title. The views of all community members are respected and valued equally. All community members are acknowledged for possessing important views, knowledge, and expertise that is valued by the whole. We expect to experience a sense of belonging, value, and teamwork as members of the FNU community.
Respect
FNU community members treat each other with respect and acknowledge that all community members are important, integral individuals whose unique contributions are required for the success of the community as a whole. We actively strive to promote collegiality and inclusivity through our teaching and learning, diversity initiatives, and collaborative projects to engender a sense of community accomplishment and cohesiveness.
Positive Communication
At FNU, we communicate with the goal of mutual understanding. Kind, thoughtful, open communication is the norm, and community members seek positive communication and avoid negative communication. When we communicate with others, we do so in a positive, effective manner. This includes such behaviors as openly sharing information, delivering constructive criticism with kindness, apologizing when appropriate, earnest listening, enquiring about others’ lives, praising others, and expressing gratitude for a job well done. We appreciate being acknowledged for routine actions taken in the course of simply “doing our jobs”, and know that by expressing gratitude to one another we build and maintain our culture of caring. Our communication patterns reflect that we value friendship with and support from others in the FNU community, and that we appropriately show support, compassion, and sympathy toward other community members.
Mutual Support
At FNU, we are concerned about each other’s wellbeing. We strive to act with warm, caring professionalism, and to treat each other with kindness, thoughtfulness, and patience. We are dedicated to helping others when the need arises. We value teamwork, and go out of our way to help each other achieve our individual and collective goals. We are sensitive, empathetic, and compassionate to the needs, concerns, and experiences of other community members and support each other, when needed, through hardships and difficulties. As FNU community members, we respect each other, help each other, support each other’s successes, and patiently help each other problem solve when needed.
FNU’s Culture of Caring: Come Join Us!
We hope you agree that living within a Culture of Caring at FNU is beneficial to all FNU community members. When we enjoy a Culture of Caring, we also enjoy a committed and loyal community where all members feel valued, confident, empowered, accepted, and experience a cohesive sense of belonging to something larger than themselves. Relationships among community members are healthy and collegial, and there is more harmony within the community and more satisfying, less stressful working conditions. When we behave according to the Culture of Caring, we act with sincerity and open-mindedness in an overarching atmosphere of respect. All voices are heard and everyone contributes to their fullest while regularly experiencing positive interactions with each other. When we routinely consider the effects of our actions on other community members, our individual behaviors reflect awareness of our responsibility to the larger FNU community. Our actions are consistent with our values, and we begin by nurturing ourselves so we can nurture others. As we all promote caring in the FNU environment, we exemplify the caring behaviors we hope to bring to the wider healthcare system. Come join us as we thrive in FNU’s Culture of Caring!
