RA*Chat Ep 54: I was an RA: Transferable Skills for Life and Career

Crystal Lay:
Hello, and welcome back to Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast where we highlight cool people who do cool things and talk about cool stuff in residence life and college student housing. I’m your guest host, Crystal Lay, and I use the she/her series pronouns.
Today is geared toward our student staff and we have a guest here, Keneise Evans, who’s going to be talking to us about transferable skills. When I was an RA, or actually when I was an undergrad, I remember wanting to be a music video editor or a television producer, and then I became an RA for the really cool leadership opportunities and it definitely was that. But when I think back to my RA peers and my colleagues, very few of us actually went on into housing and I think that is still very true today. Many folks will not continue on into housing and residence life. And so I wanted to spend some time with someone who was an RA and is not working in housing, so we can get an understanding of what are some transferable skills that she’s using in her role that could be helpful as you navigate your journey as a student staff member. So I’ll start off by having our guests introduce herself.

Keneise Evans:
Hello, my name is Keneise Evans. I use the she/her pronouns as well. I’m currently the assistant, sorry, assistant dean for leadership and engagement at the University of Iowa within the Dean of Students office. I’ve been in this job for about four weeks, but this isn’t my first time at the university. I did actually work in housing about seven years ago here at the University of Iowa, so I have a pretty extensive housing background, but found my way out of housing, which I think is kind of perfect for today’s topic.

Crystal Lay:
Well, thank you so much for being here. We’ll start with our questions. So the first question, why did you become an RA? What’s your RA story?

Keneise Evans:
Yeah, so I was a student at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and I did a little bit of everything before I became an RA. I was in Black Student Union. I started a sorority on our campus. You name it, I did. I was a tutor. I worked, I did all these other things and I was kind of actually waiting to become an RA. I wanted to get all that stuff out the way before I became an RA.
I started my RA journey because really I didn’t see students that looked like me in RA positions and not all of us had really great experiences. So I wanted to see was there a way for me to be one of those staff members and maybe make a difference. I’m always one of those people that’s like, what’s behind the curtain? There has to be something behind the curtain. So really I became an RA because I wanted to see what was behind the curtain. Little did I know I was going to find my passion, the things that I really loved and become a housing professional, but it really started off of like, I want my experience to be different. I care about the place I’m at. Let me become an RA and see what I can do.

Crystal Lay:
I love that and I think that’s the essence of engagement. How do I get connected and involved and learn more? So thanks for sharing that. I’m curious, what was your undergrad major and then how did you end up in your current role or shifting over into being an assistant dean?

Keneise Evans:
My undergraduate major was in psychology. You could have bet any amount of money that I was going to be a psychologist. I wanted to do marriage and family counseling because something I really believe in, but obviously I went on and got my master’s degree in student affairs. So it didn’t quite happen that way, but I feel like I still can use those skills. In addition to being an RA, I also worked for Upward Bound as part of the TRIO programs and I did their housing role. So I started off as they called them peer mentors or something like that where you’re essentially an RA for the summer. And then I moved up and I was the assistant hall director for the summer, and then I was the director for the summer. And every summer I came back, they were like, “Are you going into the field yet?” And I’m like, “No, I’m going to grad school for counseling. It’s going to be great.” And then my final summer I was like, “I think I like this thing that you’ve been telling me about.”
So I worked with my advisor at the time to go into the student affairs program at UNI. So I did both my undergraduate and my graduate work at UNI. Got a housing assistantship, so I was a assistant hall coordinator, did that role, very traditional kind of path. From there, I graduated my master’s. I worked two years in a live-in position at the University of St. Thomas where I did very traditional housing work and then I went back to UNI and worked there for three years in another live-in housing role. Then my first time here at the University of Iowa, I was an assistant director for housing. I really specialized in the care side of things, so anything that wasn’t conduct related, I did the management of that system. And then I supervised live-in staff and did all of our diversity, equity, inclusion work.
So I was really trying to figure out what my portfolio could look like during that time. We were still in the thick of the pandemic maybe, but people were going back to work, so we weren’t fully remote anymore. And someone had told me about the job, my previous job to this role at a small private here in Iowa where I ended up being the dean of students for almost three years. And that’s when I learned that maybe I like things outside of housing because, again, if you would ask Keneise 10 years ago, will you be in housing for the rest of your life? The answer was absolutely yes. Don’t ask me anything else. This is my path because I was that dead set.
So I was a dean of students at Coe College in Cedar Rapids where my portfolio included housing, but I also had campus life, I had conduct, I had health and wellness, and then the overall oversight of our office. And that’s when I was like, maybe I do like other parts of the student experience and really enjoyed the leadership aspect. I loved working with fraternity and sorority life. I liked the campus programs part. I advised in it. Those parts were really helping me see this part of the student experience where they find their leadership and they find their people and they figure out who they’re going to be. I remembered going through that as a student, so now being able to facilitate that for students became a really key part of me wanting to do this work a little bit more extensively.
So then when this opportunity came along, it was nice to think about I could do a fourth of what I’m doing on a larger scale and really do some really great things with the staff that was already doing really great work here. So it was kind of a natural transition. For personal reasons, I needed to leave my last position, but it also helped me to have started those skill building there, but also still use a lot of my housing skills. I refer to a lot of the things I learned as a housing professional that has really helped me along the way.

Crystal Lay:
And I hear some threads from, okay, psych major that’s helping people wanting to learn processes and how they work so you can help people. I hear this thread of caring and compassion that you’ve brought throughout, and I love that. I love that connection. When you think back to being an RA, what are some skills that you can name like, yes, this came from being an RA or I got to utilize these as an RA and you found yourself using them in the current role that you have?

Keneise Evans:
Yeah, I think being flexible, right? You got to be ready for any call at any time or any knock. That’s the first time you learn people will ask you anything and you should have a good answer. So I think my flexibility definitely came from that. The ability to almost work a room, I call it. So I’m an introvert at heart. I need to be by myself. I love myself. I love quiet time. I call myself an introvert with extrovert moments, but that’s where I learned to come alive. You got to be able to really show up in a room and get people excited and get people doing some things. So, that enthusiasm that you have to have sometimes. I think time management skills. When you’re an RA, you’re worried about your floor, you’re worried about your classes, you’re going to staff meetings, you’re putting on programs. There’s just a lot of pieces that go into a role like that that I really think molds you.
Programming. So thinking of things from top to bottom, do I have the money to do it? What time is the best time to do it? Do I have all my supplies? Have I advertised for it? Have I thought about all the things that could go right and wrong so that I can have the contingency plans? So a lot of those things are the things that I’ve used in every job that I’ve had, whether it was in housing or not, and I think that’s one of my strongest skills of being able to think about things top to bottom. I spent so much of my time being a generalist that when it was time to narrow in, I think I knew enough, I had a good breadth of knowledge to then be able to hone in a lot of my skills of, I love this lane, but I have all of this stuff I can use in this lane, and I don’t think I would’ve got that without my housing experience.

Crystal Lay:
And it sounds like not only was it career skill building, it’s also some life skills. We all could benefit from time management or budgeting and thinking about impact. So, funny question, but sometimes I have these moments of thinking back to when I was an RA or referencing my time, but I’m still in housing. So maybe that doesn’t count. But wondering for you, how often do you find yourself referencing your time as an RA or maybe thinking back to your time in housing?

Keneise Evans:
I think, I think about my time in housing a lot because, like I said, a lot of my skills were learned there or the first time I did something, it was because I did it as a housing professional or in this role. And even now that I’m back at the University of Iowa, a lot of my time that people are referencing is my time in housing because that’s what they know me from. So I haven’t really been able to escape that, not that I’m trying to, because I think it was some good skills that I got there.
When I think about my RA role, I think college was probably for most of us, was some of the best times of our lives. You were so carefree, you thought you were stressed, but you didn’t know stress because adult stress is hard. I wouldn’t say I had a magical RA experience. I think we all have worked with those staffs where they’re all best friends and they love each other so much and they do everything together and they’re just kumbaya-ing all the time. That wasn’t actually my experience. It was a four-person staff. We were in an all upper class building. It was all singles. It was not this magical experience I thought I was going to have of my floor is going to love me, we’re going to do all these things together. We’re going to bond. My best friend lived on my floor and she’s half the reason why I got people at my program is because my friend came to my program.
But when I think about some of the friendships I made, some of the supervisors I got to work with or professionals that I met as a student, but then I got to work with as a professional, it was really special. And that really, they got to see me grow up. I got to learn from them in different ways. And then my undergrad is just, it brings back really good memories for me. So I love to think about my time holistically there and just all the ways that… I tell them the Keneise I am today is because I went to UNI and did the things that I did at UNI. And being an RA for two years definitely has a huge piece in that along with all the other things I did there.
One of my best friends from college who I met as an RA, we’re still friends to this day. When she moved back to Iowa, after she finished all her grad work and her studies, we were able to reconnect and sometimes we reminisce on those moments and think about the times that we had and what we learned and how we kind of connected the dots. So a lot of that is the things that I carry. And then just my time as a professional working with RA staffs, that has been some of the best moments of my life. This picture that you can see behind me, I have a staff that’s holding paper signs that says “Thank you, Keneise.” And that was my first staff as a full-time professional. And I still say that they were the most wonderful women that I’ve ever worked with as a hall coordinator because they really showed me what it was meant to be a mentor and a role model and to do the work that I loved.
But they were my first staff that I handpicked, that I got to work with, that I got to mold. And we did some really cool things that year. So it was nice to have made that bonds. And I’ve been invited to weddings and baby showers and I keep up with their lives and some of them went into the field. So those kind of things kind of stick with you. And I don’t think I would’ve had any of that had I not worked in housing because our other student affairs professionals, which I guess I’m one of those now, you have some pretty cool experiences with students and do some of that, but it is very different from a housing professional. What we do, no one will ever understand if they never do it. And I think that I’m grateful that I got that experience.

Crystal Lay:
And I think so many people are grateful for engaging and connecting with you. You just sound like a wonderful human to connect with.

Keneise Evans:
Thank you.

Crystal Lay:
So, hopefully we can stay in touch.

Keneise Evans:
Good. I hope that too.

Crystal Lay:
There are a lot of pieces that you just shared though. You talked about having another RA that you can say, let’s reflect back on this experience because it is very different. And so having someone that understands the work, the role, someone you can process with, I think that’s important because it is a very different job and student leadership opportunity, I think, in undergrad. You also talked about having a smaller staff, maybe some difficult moments that came from, or this impression of this is what the RA role will be versus how it turned out. With that, I remember that there were some difficult moments when I was an RA. There were a lot of ups and downs. And so if you could give current RAs or student staff members advice, what would you tell them? How would you help them? Or what should they think about as they’re trying to navigate the ups and downs or the difficulties that might come with being a student staff member?

Keneise Evans:
Yeah, I think go in with your expectations in a positive attitude, but be open to that changing and evolving. I don’t think I really got that until I was in grad school, but I hung on long enough to see it through, which I’m glad that I did because if after my first year I would’ve been like, “Oh, this was nothing I wanted it to be, I’m done,” I wouldn’t have gotten everything else that I got out of it. So I think be willing to let things change and evolve in a natural way and don’t feel like you have to have the same experience that someone else had. I think especially as RAs or student staff members in housing, everyone’s like, “Well, if I don’t have it this way, then I’m doing it wrong or there’s something wrong.” And it’s like, everyone’s experience would’ve been different.
I’ve worked with staffs of 18 and it’s like, “Ooh, would I have loved to be on staff with 18 versus four?” Maybe I would’ve found my way somewhere in the middle. But there’s just so many different ways that you can connect with other staff members and even students that could still be really impactful that you can get a lot out of it if you let it evolve as it’s supposed to evolve instead of, well, if I don’t meet this mark, that means I’m doing it wrong. I don’t think that there’s a wrong way you’re doing it. I think it just kind of happens naturally and allow it to happen naturally so that you can get out of it what you need out of it. Because not everyone who’s an RA is going to be a housing professional, and that’s okay, but I think what you gain from being an RA, it sets you apart from anyone else in a pool that you’re in because you’ve learned so many skills that you get to take with you.

Crystal Lay:
That’s so true. The crisis management, the flexibility, time management, you shared so many different pieces. For current RAs, so they’re doing the role right now and they’re trying to find a connection, how does being an RA connect to being in psychology or broadcasting, et cetera, or the connection between the classes that they currently have and their career path? What’s that tip? How do you help them sort through creating a connection between the career path and this student leadership opportunity or job?

Keneise Evans:
Yeah, it’s all about those transferable skills or those soft skills that we talk about when we think about hiring. I’ve been on many search committees and hiring committees and done a lot of hiring even in my career and sometimes you see the person with the exact experience you want and you’re like, “Oh,” and then they get there and they don’t quite have it together or vice versa. I think, again, you don’t have to go into the field just because you were an RA.
I think there’s so many things you’re going to learn that’s going to, again, set you apart that you’ll be able to use. So you’ll be able to talk about, well, I have the skillset and the degree or the X to do the actual job, but let me tell you how I’m going to do the job. Let me tell you how I’m going to apply my soft skills. Let me tell you about my ability to take initiative and lead the program or how I can think fast on my feet. Or, if there is a crisis or a lot going on, I can manage crowds, I can manage different parts going on. I can remain confidential in certain spaces. I know what it means to lead a team, to be a leader. To lead a floor of people is not always easy. To get buy-in.
So those are all things you’re learning because you’re doing programming, you’re answering questions all the time. You’re answering people in crisis moments or even just something as simple as a fire drill. There’s so many little things that we think people just instinctively know, and it’s like, no, most people don’t know that. People don’t know that when I’m at a concert or something, I’m like, “Where are all the exits? Me and my friends need to get out. We need to get out.” And most people know I am thinking of from top to bottom, how are we going to do something? But most people just show up to places and they’re like, “Oh, it’s fine.” And I’m like, “No, that’s a fire hazard.” And some of us only know that, right? It comes in handy.
So it’s those kinds of pieces where your mind just starts to work differently. So I say use those skills in those very technical things. So I’ve had RAs go on to be engineers and news people, just do amazing things that I’m like, “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I could do that. But the fact that you were an RA, I know it served you well because you learned how to be a true leader and now you’re applying that in your field of study and that’s great to see.”

Crystal Lay:
I love all that. So we’re coming to the end of our time, and so my last question for you is really in your current role, you’re really talking about leadership and involvement in getting folks engaged. So if students want to know more about that, whether it be transferable skills or leadership skills, anything that you think would be really neat, where should they start? Is there a book, website, reference? What’s in your toolkit that can help students that have a question about this topic?

Keneise Evans:
As a student or even a younger professional, I was really into the many assessments you can take to tell you about yourself. So whether it was Myers-Briggs or True Colors or Strengths Quest or the million things that are out there. But I think for people who maybe want to learn a little bit more about themselves, that’s actually a really basic way to start because then you can start to say, so if I think about my true colors, I’m equally blue and gold, so I’m all about the feelings, but I want to get stuff done. I’m like, well, how are we completing the task? But also, how do you feel? It’s those kinds of things.
I talked about being an introvert. All of my Strengths Quests are in relationship building. So I’m really good with people, doesn’t mean I can’t strategically think or execute, but I’m really good at the people aspect of the things that are going on. So early in my career, that was really helpful for me to start to explain who I was. I knew these things about myself, but I didn’t have the verbiage to use. So that gives you a good way to start thinking about yourself, talking about yourself, learning about yourself.
And I think from there it’s finding is there something you’re super passionate about or something that you want to know more about or you want to be able to implement. And that’s kind of how I choose what I’m going to read or what I’m interested in. So a big focus of mine is diversity, equity, and inclusion. So I’m fitting into a lot of spaces that quite frankly weren’t made for me that aren’t always as open to me given my identity as a Black woman. So I’m always thinking about like, yes, I love this and I look different for most people on the table. So what resources can I use to help me to excel in those places?
I think getting a mentor is also a really good idea. It doesn’t have to be someone that’s related to your field of study or your supervisor. It could just be someone on a campus that you admire or someone that you know from something else. What I’ve learned is a lot of people want to help other people. They want to see people be successful, so take that chance and ask someone like, “Hey, do you mind talking to me a couple of times a month or a couple of times a week? I really want to know more about you, or I really want help in this area.” Mentorship has been really beneficial for me on both sides. To be mentored, but also to offer mentorship has really helped me out a lot.
And I think the other piece is to talk about these things. Listen to like these podcasts. So listening to things and then saying like, “Hey, I heard this thing. Can we talk more about that? Or have you thought about that?” Especially if you have RA friends or housing friends that have that similar experience it’s kind of easier because people get it. But I’ve also found that when I talk to my non-student affairs friends, it’s also really nice to be able to learn from them, but also them learn from me and us find different ways to support each other. So making sure you’re letting people know like, “This is what I’m interested in, or this is what I’m dealing with,” without obviously giving away details if it’s confidential, but finding a way to engage people so people know that you’re excited about something and can support you in whatever you’re doing.

Crystal Lay:
Those are great tips. I’m also an introvert, and so thinking about what are some different questions or ways you can engage with folks. I like the mentorship piece. I think that’s important. And I also enjoy the inventories because that’s a nice thing I can do by myself and read and process and then figure out how to find-

Keneise Evans:
And give it to some friends, and you all could talk about it together. Sometimes I sit in my friend groups like, “Ooh, you are a _.” Fill in the blank, right? But I get to do it by myself. I get to process it by myself. And then if you want to engage, it’s a really nice way to kind of have a shared experience because a lot of what we need, we need shared experiences in order for us to really be able to blossom and grow sometimes. So that one always feels super safe to me.

Crystal Lay:
And I like that imagery. And that reminds us that for our listeners who are currently an undergrad, you don’t have to have it all figured out, right? You are blossoming, you are growing, you are continuously learning, so don’t feel like you need to know all the things right now and you’ll find your path that makes sense for you. Because you talked about that as well, right? Every path is unique and figure out what-

Keneise Evans:
And even if you think you know, be open to it changing. Because I thought I do, and it changed.

Crystal Lay:
Yeah. I am not producing music videos and that’s okay. That is okay.

Keneise Evans:
It is.

Crystal Lay:
Well, this has been such a wonderful conversation, lots of great information. Thank you so much, Keneise, for joining me and making time. And thanks everyone for joining us on this episode of ResEdChat. If you have an idea of a topic or a person you want us to have on the show, please let us know by reaching out to Roompact and take care.