The Values-Enacted Leadership Institute (VELI), a project of HuMetricsHSS, is a five-day, in-person higher education leadership retreat for teams embarking on a major change initiative.
Over the course of the week, teams are guided through a set of activities designed to help them identify shared values; develop concrete strategies for putting those values into action; identify levers for change; map their collective power—and come away with a detailed action plan for the months ahead.
VELI is explicitly team-oriented and focused on institutional and cross-institutional as well as individual transformation. Rather than training leaders to move on to their next role, we help participants develop pathways to flourish where they are.
In 2027, VELI will take place in Portland, Oregon July 10th - 15th, 2027. Applications for VELI 2027 open Thursday, November 12, and close January 31st, 2027.
What is Values-Enacted Leadership?
Values-enacted leadership is a collaborative approach to institutional change that puts values at the center of decision-making, policy creation, and daily practice. Values-enacted leadership actively embeds explicit values in the systems, processes, and culture that shape institutional life. When acting in a values-enacted leadership way, leaders and their institutions hold themselves accountable to visible and actionable values in everything from daily decisions to strategic planning.
Why Values-Enacted Leadership Now?
Our institutions state aspirational values, but may often lack the incentives, reward structures, and policies, or even the capabilities and framework, to put those values into practice. Moments of crisis too frequently drive us away from, rather than toward, core values that might help us navigate change or seemingly insurmountable challenges
Higher education is in one such crisis. As external forces exert unprecedented influence, restrict opportunities, and attempt to ideologically control our institutions, leaders at all levels are struggling to act with intention and in ways that build, rather than corrode, trust. We are not only being pulled from our mission but from each other.
But what if we reframed this moment? Crisis also brings opportunity, a chance to change old habits and reactive behaviors and come together around a shared belief in the power and value of higher education.
A commitment to articulating, negotiating, and enacting shared values provides us with a north star, a common understanding of why we do what we do.
VELI invites you to reimagine this moment as an opportunity, not a crisis — to reconnect with your institution’s deepest commitments, to strengthen relationships across boundaries, and to build futures that embody the promise of higher education.
The VELI Difference
While many leadership programs focus on individual development, VELI recognizes that lasting transformation requires collaborative action guided by common purpose and rooted in shared values. We also recognize that leadership and the power to create change exist at every level of academic institutions and welcome teams that engage participants from across this spectrum. Finally, the HuMetricsHSS facilitation methodology approaches these issues from the perspective of the humanities and social sciences, and emphasizes the need for a truly broad understanding of scholarship and of what higher education can be.
How VELI Works
Teams will come together with a change project they propose in advance for an immersive four-day residential experience, during which time they will:
- Articulate and prioritize shared values
- Map institutional processes and power structures to reveal opportunities for values-enacted intervention
- Develop concrete, actionable plans for their specific change projects
- Build connections with change leaders across institutions
After the institute, teams will benefit from regular virtual check-ins with VELI facilitators; a follow-up on-campus site visit; and regular peer mentorship in a vibrant online community of practice.
Which types of projects might benefit from VELI?
We anticipate most projects will engage broadly with one of the following:
- cultivating transformative leadership rooted in humanities expertise;
- reframing assessment and rewards structures;
- facilitating values-enacted strategic planning and crisis management
The projects teams might propose could include but are not in any way limited to:
- Strategic planning for a center, program, or college
- Creating or improving collaboration across departments or units
- Improving incentive and support structures for departmental chairs
- Facilitating departmental mergers
- Building processes to support and recognize a broader range of scholarship, including community-engaged, public, and digital work
- Revising tenure and promotion processes to better reward underrecognized or unrecognized scholarship and creative praxis
- Addressing imbalances between departmental budgets
- Your own transformational idea!
Why HuMetricsHSS?
Since 2016, HuMetricsHSS has worked with dozens of institutions across the United States and Europe to transform academic culture through values-enacted practices. Our approach has already reshaped promotion and tenure processes, informed strategic planning at major universities, and catalyzed institutional change at both departmental and university-wide levels. Our team brings together expertise from research universities, liberal arts colleges, academic libraries, and scholarly societies, giving us a broad understanding of the challenges and opportunities for institutional transformation. Additionally, we all share a belief that by drawing on humanistic ways of knowing and the values of the humanities, we can combat the increasing isolation, censorship, and competition of the academy and work together to build something better.
VELI is made possible due to generous support from the Mellon Foundation and the William and Flora P. Hewlett Foundation.
If you want more information, sign up for one of our information sessions!
Would you like to be informed about future institutes and all things HuMetricsHSS? Sign up for our newsletter and we'll keep you updated!