One of our favorite services at RHB is Circles of Influence (there’s more background here and here). We love talking to students and the people who influence their college journeys as we look for alignment or gaps between the student experience and marketing messaging. We use our analyses of the conversations we hear to provide…Read more
Tag: DEIB
RHB in Nashville: Reflections on an Extraordinary Week of Growth
My colleague Ken Anselment has an incredible podcast you might be familiar with. At the conclusion of each episode with leaders in the enrollment management space, Ken likes to wrap up with a “rapid descent” where each guest has a number of questions quickly thrown at them related to all sorts of topics from current…Read more
Make a Real Statement about Diversity in Tenure-Track Faculty Job Ads
Many institutions are ramping up for the spring cycle of faculty hiring. It’s a time of excitement and overwhelm for everyone on all sides of the hiring equation. In a context in which a single tenure-track job ad can harvest 400 or more applicant packages, institutions are asking for greater volume in application materials as…Read more
Why You Don’t Need to be Afraid of Performativity
In our study of 108 active higher education strategic plans, we discovered that by far, the most common theme in strategic plan goals or priorities was diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB). Further, because DEIB-related initiatives were often distributed across all the goals in some plans, it became clear that some institutions were holistically reimagining…Read more
What Do You Really Say When You Talk about Race and Culture? Part II in a Series
As we at RHB conduct diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) audits, guide executive leadership through consequential moments or conduct research and discovery for institutional marketing projects, we encounter a lot of different institutional language about recognizing human diversity. The fact that we continuously encounter race and culture as themes which make themselves evident in…Read more
So, How Do You Talk about Race? Part One of a Two-Part Series
At RHB, we’ve been having conversations with clients and prospective clients about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB). Specifically, we’ve been talking about marketing and communications products and how those relate to DEIB initiatives laid out in strategic plans and communications flows. These conversations occur in the service of engaging in the complicated and deeply…Read more
Why an Anthropologist Chose RHB
Why is there a linguistic anthropologist at RHB? Now that I have just about reached my one-year workaversary at RHB, I guess I have enough perspective on why I am here to answer that question from my position as said anthropologist. I have pursued a variety of professions that allowed me to learn about others’…Read more
An Upside to 2020: Greater Focus on Positionality
While the uncertainty of the year 2020 brought discomfort and grief, we gained the opportunity to think differently about our systems and our culture. As a former academic advisor, I welcome this challenge to stretch. I bring five years of professional and graduate higher education experience to my role as a Client Success Coordinator with…Read more
Why—and How—You Should Do a Communication Inclusion Audit Now
My last Insight discussed the role of language diversity on college and university campuses. That’s one piece of a much larger diversity, inclusion and accessibility-whole comprising multiple moving parts whose edges can be sharp and textured and which don’t always fit together easily. This time, we’re going to talk about doing something difficult: giving your…Read more
What Does “Diversity” Mean?
This is a rough time to be in higher education or working alongside it, which means it is also the right time to keep doing the work. I am going to reflect on “diversity,” a word that covers a potentially massively large territory. All of that space may not be under your purview depending on…Read more