By Stephen M. Gavazzi, Ph.D.

The Latest News, Views, and Announcements

What’s New at CHRR

Beginning next month, a new feature of this newsletter will be a section entitled “CHRR Team Member Celebrations.” Among other things, I will be using this space to observe the work anniversaries of our valued employees. Time and again, I am reminded that there is so much institutional knowledge here at CHRR precisely because of the many years of employment service that typify our workforce. At present, the average length of employment here at CHRR stands at 16.9 years!

This month, we are celebrating the 26^th year of employment for Jaron Shook. Bittersweetly, however, we also will be saying goodbye to Jaron at the end of this month as he will be retiring. Jaron wishes for people to know the following:

I'd like to express my gratitude to Randy Olsen and Frank Mott for bringing me on board originally, giving me such great opportunities along the way to build and add to the sum total of human knowledge. Thank you to Steve and Elizabeth and Josh and Lisa and Nick for making sure my team and I were in your budgets. 🙂 Thank you to Jeremy and Tomasz for, well, everything you do. And of course, to Nicki Stassen for originally letting me swim around in the SQL shared pool way back when. After 26 years, I'll be taking a well needed career break, recharging, retooling, finding my wonder, and maybe some wander....

Jaron also wished to share this lyrical quote with CHRR Team Members:

Where am I goin'?
I don't know
Where am I headin'?
I ain't certain
All I know
Is I am on my way

When will I be there?
I don't know
When will I get there?
I ain't certain
All that I know
Is I am on my way

- Excerpt from Lerner, A.J. and Loewe, F. "I'm on My Way" Paint Your Wagon. 1951.

Meantime, if you have not already done so, please mark your calendars for a retirement celebration this coming Friday March 22^nd. At 2:00pm, we will be serving dessert and refreshments on-site at CHRR for all those CHRR employees wanting to wish Jaron a happy retirement.

CHRR's Leadership Team

The CHRR Leadership Team spent this past month conducting Quarterly Check in (QCI) meetings with their direct reports. The overall theme of the QCIs was community building, which in many ways was an extension of the virtual town hall on the same topic that was held in February (and discussed in my last newsletter). Out of meetings with my own direct reports, I gathered that there is a great deal of excitement and enthusiasm surrounding ideas for increased contact among CHRR Team members. At the same time, there definitely is a range of opinions regarding the degree to which people wish to have first-hand experiences in various community-building activities. And that is okay! Certainly, one of the reasons that many of our team members are long-term employees is the fact that we offer a very flexible work environment. That will never change, even as we offer a greater variety of community-building opportunities both across our center and within each of our major program areas.

Things You Might Want to Know

New Publication from Wellbeing Survey

A study funded by The Columbus Foundation and performed by CHRR – in part using the American Population Panel (APP) – recently was published in Assessment, a Sage journal focused on applied clinical assessment. Using two samples drawn from the Greater Columbus, Ohio region, the authors provided “one of the first studies of a measure of communal subjective well-being, focusing on individuals’ relationships with their community.”

The full citation:

Padgett, R. N., Lee, M. T., Wilkinson, R., Tsavaris, H., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Reliability and validity of a multidimensional measure of subjective community well-being. Assessment, 10731911241229060.