Our Principles

To achieve its goals, the VSEC has developed a framework meant to encompass all its activities, from laboratory research to community events. These core principles include:

• Community Focus: Close and purposeful integration of technology, information, social sciences, and the humanities with an emphasis on advancing and equipping urban and rural communities with tools and applications ensures community-focused solutions.
• Responsibility and Transparency: Ensuring that we engage multi-disciplinary teams of university researchers and community members in our discussions and conduct a series of outward-facing and inward-looking workshops and seminars to discuss projects and their benefits while making clear the nature of individual and community data that will be used, and the steps taken to ensure responsible use of technology.
• Integrated Research and Immersion: We will ensure that each of the projects and research work we conduct are tightly integrated with undergraduate and graduate learning and immersion opportunities.
• Sustainability and Resilience: We will focus on meeting the goals of VSEC by attracting external funding and ensuring the ability to sustain the center by being adaptive and managing inevitable changes.
• Global Reach: Fostering international exchange and partnerships to address global issues of climate change, resilience, and sustainability.