Last month Todd Q. Adams, our chief of sustainability and innovation, was invited to speak to African-American male students at Lakeland Community College in Ohio. Lakeland launched Pathfinders a few years ago as a program designed to attract and retain African-American male students. To their credit, the college realizes that admission does not necessarily equate to inclusiveness. Fostering a deliberate welcoming environment is what yields positive returns for Lakeland.
Kent State University in Ohio touts that the 690 African-American, Latino, and Native American students represents a 3.3 percent enrollment increase from last year. The 2,668 international students from 103 countries represents a 9.03 percent increase from last year. Although these numbers are somewhat modest relative to the 41,000 Kent students, Kent State University is clearly establishing the framework for innovative models of diversity and inclusion. In order to deliver stakeholder engagement solutions that align with such transformational change, Visibility Marketing, Inc. rolled out Smart Inclusion™.
Smart Inclusion™ on college campuses is about integrating all students into the university ecosystem in ways that are meaningful to them as well as the university at large. Sustainability will require new success metrics that measure cross-cultural business collaboration, student-run business startups, and inclusive models measuring student life satisfaction. International student attraction and retention strategies now require targeted campaigns that are culturally relevant. According to a March, 2014 Pew Research Center study, women are also enrolling in college at a rate greater than men across almost every racial and ethnic group.
The successful institutions will be able to effectively manage the intersection of this dynamic diversity. Lakeland and Kent State University understand that “checking the box” to tally diversity does not work anymore. A June, 2014 Brookings Institution study also revealed that Millennials (those born between early 1980’s and early 2000’s) also value social responsibility and personal satisfaction more than prior generations. Traditional models of stakeholder engagement and student outreach no longer apply. Smart Inclusion™ in higher education is not merely a model of inclusion, it is model of institutional sustainability.