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My Personal Compass

Encouraging reflection and active listening

About My Personal Compass

My Personal Compass is a new initiative designed to encourage campus community members to write about the beliefs that guide their daily lives and to then thoughtfully consider the varied perspectives that are sure to result.

The initiative is modeled after National Public Radio's This I Believe program, which reprises the radio essay series hosted in the 1950s by legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow. The NPR series is intended to encourage people of different beliefs to listen to one another.

"Today the art of deep listening, of hearing and honoring another person's perspective, is perhaps a fading art," says UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef. "I'm hopeful, though, that we can reclaim that ability and achieve the greater collective understanding necessary to solve our collective challenges as members of this community and as citizens of this world. I invite members of our campus family to thoughtfully write about their guiding beliefs and to share their essays through the My Personal Compass project."

Essays of 350 to no more than 450 words are invited. They'll be posted at this special Web site and a sampling periodically printed and/or excerpted in the faculty and staff newspaper Dateline UC Davis and made available for podcasting. It's hoped they'll be discussed in classrooms, in dining halls, over tea, over coffee, among friends, among those drawn together simply by a quest for greater understanding. And it's hoped, as well, that they'll be a catalyst for further reflection and dialogue in everyday interactions.