The Rule of Saint Benedict and the role of college admission in DEIJ.
The role of the individual in a community is a central principle of the Rule of Saint Benedict, a guide written by a sixth-century Catholic monk for the members of the monastic order he founded in Subiaco, Italy.
Fourteen centuries later, the artist Bronislaw Bak (working in conjunction with the architect Marcel Breuer) prominently featured this principle in his monumental stained glass window (at the time, the largest stained glass work in the world) in the Saint John’s Abbey Church in central Minnesota. Bak, an art professor at the associated college, composed dozens of individual, hexagon motifs that interlace to form a whole.
The work becomes a metaphor for many of the Benedictine Values – accentuating balance, emphasizing the sense of place, and importantly, calling forth the importance of each individual and collection of individuals in the community. Like each hexagon, each community member is complete. That individual connects to others and those others connect to the whole – celebrating individuality and working towards a commonality.
Like the Bak work, which changes over time (reflecting the time of day and the season of the year), a college community is also in a constant state of flux – juxtaposing stability with change and growth.
As guestmasters (a Benedictine title for the member of the community in charge of welcoming guests), our role in admission is to venture out beyond the metaphoric walls of the community in search of individuals and groups of individuals who will add to our campuses through their individual talents and the plurality of their background – our pursuit of quantitative goals is conjoined with a search for qualitative characteristics.
Through my work in admission, I’ve been blessed with opportunities to engage a wide array of communities, enroll a diverse group of students, and build life-long friendships with individuals who have expanded and challenged and enriched our college community. I have traveled to Chicano communities in New Mexico, reservations in Minnesota and South Dakota, a college prep boarding school for Alaskan Natives in Sitka, Alaska, and rural and urban schools throughout the U.S., meeting amazing students along the way: a Chicana from a small town on the border of New Mexico and Mexico, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, a Yup’ik woman from a remote village, 500 miles from Anchorage, and many others.
As with the marketing of other products and services, user experience is paramount in higher education. Promotional work takes a backseat to the lived experiences of our students – successful enrollment management and marketing necessitating the ongoing monitoring and improvement of academic and student development offerings to ensure community members (customers) have a highly rewarding college experience. Curricular offerings, clubs and organizations, events, presentations, fine and performing arts, and campus culture must reflect and embrace all community members. Financial assistance must be readily available and adequately meet the needs of low-income students.
As representatives of the college community, admission and marketing teams play an important role in the ongoing creation of a diverse and cohesive campus community.
The role of Admission and Marketing in DEIJ:
- This focus on individuals in our community needs to be a leading driver of our work. Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity and Justice (DEIJ) begins with diversity but necessitates equity, inclusivity and justice – the first being the outer core and the latter three being the needed supporting inner structure. (The Bak stained glass panels rely on the supporting structure of the Breuer honeycomb.)
- Promotional messages must properly reflect the diversity of the campus community – simultaneously aspirational, honest and realistic.
- Expanding the borders of the campus community requires a financial and human resource investment. Change comes with a cost. Colleges need to make these investments.
- Forming and maintaining trusting relationships is imperative. Colleges must prioritize staff positions that lead this effort.
- Admission must work alongside colleagues from across the campus to ensure the customer satisfaction of current students respecting and appreciating differences. This satisfaction has both ethical underpinnings and practical ramifications – word-of-mouth marketing is vital to a college’s promotional efforts, and the rapidly changing demographic landscape demands an expansion of colleges’ customer base.
- And, most importantly, admission must actively listen (another Benedictine Value) – to students, staff, external experts and important gatekeepers.
Additional Sources:
The Rule of Saint Benedict
Bronislaw Bak
Marcel Breuer
Saint John’s Abbey Church (PDF)