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R&I STAFF RETREAT
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Each summer, the Division of Research & Innovation (R&I) hosts a staff retreat. A staff retreat is a great way to boost employee morale and strengthen relationships across the teams in the division. This year Vice President Rajan, supported the day-long 2021 R&I Retreat at an off-campus venue. It allowed the team a chance to take a step back from the day-to-day work, spend time building towards the bigger picture, rejuvenate, and get excited around a united mission of the Division while having fun and building bonds between the team members. This year’s retreat was particularly important.
Vice President Rajan set the expectation for the day: to be FUN. He presented what the team had accomplished the previous year, despite historic challenges. The Division remained true to its core values, vision, and goals and rose to the challenge of serving PVAMU faculty, researchers, and students.
The retreat provided an opportunity for R&I leadership and each of the area heads to share information on challenges and accomplishments, and changes during the last year. The leadership also shared plans and goals for the next fiscal year.
The retreat activities supported the R&I Core Values. R&I also added a significant number of new staff, and some existing employees had assumed new roles. Therefore, the annual retreat proved to be the ideal opportunity to reinforce and deepen our commitment to Prairie View A&M University and R&I's vision, goals, and mission. Rajan recognized staff for their exceptional contributions along with numerous games, fun elements, and prizes. The 2021 R&I Retreat featured a workshop with Birkman International. The planning committee selected Birkman because of its comprehensive assessment tools to identify strengths, motivators, behaviors, and interests of R&I staff. The Birkman method helps an individual to make informed decisions about how one interacts with others. Throughout the exercises, Birkman provided insight on tools to help team members work in accord with others with different personalities, address situations that may arise within a team setting or in daily work situations, and personal coping skills in times of stress. While prior retreats have been highly interactive and physically and mentally challenging, this one involved more critical thinking and higher-level engagement. Considering our current, unique set of circumstances, the retreat proved to be well-paced in a comfortable physical environment. Even with lots of interaction with the entire team, there were opportunities for small group engagement and self-reflection. Overall, the R&I Staff Retreat was a great success and well appreciated by the staff.
