Okanagan Charter

Founded to educate leaders able to apply knowledge and hands-on skills to benefit society, WPI focuses on creating an inclusive campus and academic environment that inspires students, faculty, and staff to grow as individuals and as part of the global community.

 WPI’s adoption of the Okanagan Charter reflects the university’s values and its commitment to prioritizing the health and well-being of the entire campus community, while also benefitting society at large. We recognize essential interconnections between people, place, and planet in elevating community health and well-being for those occupying our campus and its environs, both now and into the future. WPI’s current strategic plan, Lead With Purpose 2021-2026, prioritizes student well-being, belonging, and community as three key focus areas.

As part of its strategic plan, WPI formally established its Center for Well-Being in 2022  as a hub to provide leadership and direction for a campuswide approach to elevating well-being. Building upon prior work, WPI faculty, staff, and students formed its Campus Wellness Coalition, a group recruited from key constituencies across the campus and dedicated to extending the understanding of and support for instituting best practices in campus health and well-being. The Coalition provides the means to better understand and address campus well-being from a systems and settings perspective. 

WPI has longstanding commitments to global learning, collaboration, and sustainability. As such, in developing the Okanagan plan, the Dean of Student Wellness has partnered with WPI’s Global School and Office of Sustainability to recognize the essential interconnection of person, place, and planet in its work. As a STEM-oriented university focused on project-based learning, WPI has a strong research orientation with many opportunities for faculty, staff, and students to address issues related to health and well-being on campus, in the region, and around the globe.

WPI is well positioned to build upon its considerable strengths as it moves forward with this work. The Okanagan Charter provides an excellent framework to further guide this effort and offers a community of support for advancing health and well-being on campuses throughout the world. WPI is proud to adopt the Okanagan Charter and to be a member of the United States Health Promoting Campus Network (USHPCN).