Strategic Advisory Services
Build a campus culture where dialogue can endure
A lasting culture of inquiry, dialogue, and free expression doesn't emerge from a single program or moment. It takes shared skills, committed leadership, aligned strategies, and institutional systems that reinforce constructive engagement over time.
CDI's Strategic Advisory Services is CDI's approach to helping colleges and universities understand their current culture, establish a shared direction, and embed change across campus life.
CDI and Culture Change
All CDI work contributes to campus cultures of inquiry, dialogue, and free expression.
CDI builds the individual skills and mindsets people need to engage difference with curiosity, humility, and confidence — and just as intentionally, designs the institutional conditions that reinforce them, so those capabilities take root and become durable rather than depending on any one person or moment.
Culture change can begin in many places: a classroom, an orientation program, a leadership retreat, a student organization, a policy review, or a campus-wide initiative. CDI's strategic advisory services help institutions connect these efforts, so they reinforce a common direction rather than remain isolated.
Culture is reflected in what people do, what an institution says it values, and the assumptions that shape decisions and behavior. Sustained change occurs when new practices are supported by clear priorities, consistent leadership, aligned systems, and ongoing learning.
The Five Pillars of Campus Culture Change
CDI's research-informed framework helps institutions examine culture across five connected areas. The pillars give campus leaders a shared lens for understanding what is already working, where efforts are disconnected, and where focused action could create momentum.
Senior leaders establish a clear direction, model constructive engagement, and visibly support people doing dialogue work, especially when disagreement becomes difficult.
Strategic Advisory Services
CDI supports campus stakeholders in developing a shared understanding of their current culture, a common direction for inquiry, dialogue, and free expression, clear priorities across the institution, and the internal capacity to sustain the work over time.
Every institution begins from a different place. CDI scales the work to the campus context and partners with institutional teams through four stages.
Discovery
CDI develops a shared understanding of the institution's current culture through document review, interviews, focus groups, and existing campus data. Findings are examined through the Five Pillars and synthesized with a campus steering committee. The institution gains a shared, evidence-based understanding of where its culture is strong and where it is under strain.
Alignment
CDI facilitates a strategic planning process that helps campus stakeholders surface options, gather input, test resources, and make deliberate choices about priorities and tradeoffs. Campus stakeholders agree on what to prioritize and who will lead each part of the work.
Activation
The institution implements and tests its plan, measures progress, and adjusts where needed. CDI provides coordination, tools, coaching, and program support while institutional teams build their own capacity and ownership. The institution develops a leadership team equipped to continue the work without outside support.
Sustainment
The campus owns the work and continues to evolve it as conditions change. CDI may continue to support the institution through Perspectives and live programs, along with periodic coaching or retainer support. The institution sustains a culture of inquiry, dialogue, and free expression that continues to strengthen over time.
A practical place to begin
Not every institution is ready to begin a multi-year culture change engagement. A diagnostic workshop offers a focused starting point for leadership teams that want to clarify what they need, bring more stakeholders into the conversation, or assess their readiness for broader work.
The workshop helps institutions identify the conditions and recurring challenges shaping dialogue, examine current efforts through the 5 Pillars, surface areas of alignment or uncertainty, and determine whether targeted programming or a broader institutional approach is the right next step.
Move from disconnected efforts to a shared institutional direction.