Moving from Institutional Values to Shared Practice
The Council for Community & Culture in Practice serves as a cross-institutional advisory body that aligns community experience, institutional knowledge, and Pratt’s values with strategic planning and practice, emphasizing its role in shaping institutional engagement, culture, and community impact.
The Council provides ECC and institutional leadership with cross-campus perspectives, analysis, and recommendations related to institutional climate, engagement, culture, accessibility, community, and belonging. Its contributions inform planning, institutional learning, coordination, and continuous improvement.
As a connective structure, the Council brings together students, faculty, staff, and administrators to exchange perspectives, examine institutional patterns, and identify opportunities to improve policies, practices, procedures, and communications.
The Council provides a forum for institutional dialogue, strategic guidance, and collaboration across roles, divisions, and areas of expertise. It connects community experiences with institutional knowledge through planning, learning, and continuous improvement.
Background and Evolution of the Council
From 2018–2024, Pratt’s DEI Council supported the implementation of the institution’s DEI Strategic Plan through a large cross-functional structure comprising students, faculty, staff, and administrators, organized into subcommittees aligned with the plan’s core pillars.
After completing that strategic plan, the Council structure was intentionally reduced and re-evaluated to support a new phase of institutional work focused on engagement, culture, and community.
This updated Council structure reflects an evolution in both purpose and design:
to a more strategically positioned advisory and coordination body, ongoing institutional stewardship and alignment, and cross-institutional integration and shared responsibility.
In 2026, the Council evolved once again as the Office of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion transitioned to the Office of Engagement, Culture, & Community. This evolution reflects Pratt’s effort to expand and clarify the broader institutional outcomes that this work seeks to strengthen, including meaningful engagement, an affirming institutional culture, strong community relationships, and greater institutional alignment throughout the life of the Institute.
The updated framing recognizes that diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging remain essential strategies, while engagement, culture, and community represent the broader institutional conditions and outcomes those strategies help support.
Role of the Council
The Council recognizes that engagement, culture, and community are shared institutional responsibilities. Its work supports meaningful participation, trustworthy relationships, clearer communication, and institutional practices that are responsive to community experience and evolve in ways that benefit the entire Pratt community. The Council does not function as a compliance or decision-making body. Its advisory role is to help Pratt examine how policies, systems, communications, and practices operate through the lenses of institutional experience and community impact.
The Council has six interconnected functions:
1. Institutional Advisory and Strategic Guidance
2. Policy, Practice, and Systems Review
3. Institutional Feedback, Coordination, and Sense-Making
4. Institutional Activation and Shared Practice
5. Strategic Engagement and Initiative Support
6. Annual Priorities, Planning, and Progress
Membership
The Council is composed of students, faculty, staff, and administrators who already hold institutional roles connected to engagement, culture, community, communication, leadership, student experience, faculty life, employee experience, or institutional coordination.
Membership is designed not simply around broad representation, but around institutional connectivity and the ability to support two-way communication, coordination, and institutional learning across Pratt.
- Council members are selected based on:
- Institutional role and positionality
- Ability to help cascade information and learning across institutional areas
- Capacity to surface perspectives, concerns, and emerging patterns from their respective communities
- Credibility and relational trust within their areas
- Commitment to constructive institutional engagement and improvement
The Vice President of Engagement, Culture & Community invites and appoints members in consultation with the Senior Leadership Team.
Faculty membership is determined through partnership with the Academic Senate, which nominates eight faculty members to serve on the Council for staggered two-year terms.
The ECC coordinates meetings and provides administrative support, relevant institutional context, data, and materials; supports transparency and communication; partners with Council leadership on annual planning and priorities; and communicates how Council input informs institutional thinking and action.
Questions related to the Council charge, infrastructure, or membership: email campus-community@pratt.edu.