Welcome to the Office of Engagement, Culture & Community
The Office of Engagement, Culture & Community (ECC) serves as a primary steward, strategic partner, and institutional resource advancing Pratt’s vision for an affirming, connected, and thriving campus community.
The Office recognizes that meaningful engagement, a strong institutional culture, and community relationships are essential to Pratt’s mission. The Office works with students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners to expand participation, support learning, strengthen accountability, and connect shared responsibility with institutional action.
The Office is committed to creating an environment where every member of the Pratt community is treated with dignity, respected across their differences, and able to contribute meaningfully to institutional life. Through education, dialogue, strategic partnership, accessibility leadership, and institutional engagement, the Office connects Pratt’s stated values with the relationships, practices, and decisions that shape everyday experiences.
This work supports Pratt’s aspiration to be a leading creative institution distinguished by academic excellence and the strength, integrity, and imagination of its community.
Mission
The Office advances Pratt’s vision for an affirming, connected, and thriving campus by strengthening engagement, shaping institutional culture, supporting community relationships, and helping align policies, practices, and systems with the Institute’s values.
Vision
We envision a Pratt where every member of the community can participate meaningfully, contribute creatively, and experience an institutional culture grounded in dignity, accountability, collaboration, and trust.
Our work advances an environment in which students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners are respected, connected, and empowered to help shape Pratt’s present and future.
Engagement, Culture & Community Framework
As an educational institution and creative community, Pratt has a responsibility not only to articulate its values but to help community members develop the skills, practices, and relationships necessary to live those values in everyday institutional life.
These definitions provide a shared language and framework for understanding how members of the Pratt community participate in institutional life, influence campus culture, and sustain relationships within and beyond the Institute. They guide learning, reflection, decision-making, and shared practice.
- Engagement: Meaningful participation in institutional life through opportunities for dialogue, contribution, feedback, collaboration, and shared responsibility.
- Culture: The everyday norms, traditions, behaviors, practices, choices, interactions, and institutional decisions that shape how Pratt operates.
- Community: The interconnected relationships grounded in trust, belonging, care, accountability, and mutual responsibility that sustain institutional life within and around Pratt.
Together, engagement, culture, and community shape the conditions under which people can participate meaningfully, encounter dignity in institutional life, navigate differences constructively, and contribute to an affirming, creative, intellectually vibrant, and dignifying campus environment.
Our History and Evolution
Pratt established the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in 2018 following an Institute-wide planning process that began in 2015. Its work advanced institutional attention to diversity, climate, access, equity, learning, and inclusion for all.
The Office has since evolved to reflect the expanded scope, institutional relationships, and responsibilities of its work. Diversity, equity, and inclusion remain foundational values and essential strategies within ECC’s work. This evolution does not depart from those commitments. It places them within a broader institutional framework focused on how these values are practiced, experienced, and sustained across the Institution in everyday practice.