Dive Brief:
- Vanderbilt University has joined with 10 other higher education institutions in the state to form the Greater Tennessee Higher Education Recruitment Consortium and work to increase diversity among faculty, staff, and executives.
- Greater TN HERC is the 17th such consortium that has formed among regional groups of colleges and universities aiming to increase diversity on their campuses, among women as well as people of color.
- According to Vanderbilt, the organization will provide support related to the search process, offer a member-powered job board for job seekers, and facilitate discussions between institutional leaders, among other roles.
Dive Insight:
Colleges and universities often tout their levels of student diversity in displays of their campus diversity overall, working to increase the variety of students on campus while neglecting faculty and staff hires that would stretch that metric throughout the entire campus community. Consortia give individual member institutions access to additional resources they might not be able to afford alone. Nationwide, 700 colleges, universities, hospitals, research labs, government agencies, and other organizations are associated with a Higher Education Recruitment Consortium. The original consortium was founded in California in 2000.