In this episode of Roompact’s ResEdChat, Dustin is chatting with Cory about his career journey in a variety of roles across different functional areas, many of which have been at the same institution. Cory shares reflections and advice on how best to determine what it is your looking for professionally, the value of finding a good mentor, and leveraging different resources to ensure you’re making sound decisions about your career.
Guest: Dr. Cory Shapiro (he/him/his), Assistant Dean of Students, Arizona State University
Host: Dustin Ramsdell
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About ResEdChat
Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast is a platform to showcase people doing great work and talk about hot topics in residence life and college student housing. If you have a topic idea for an episode, let us know!
Transcript:
Dustin Ramsdell:
Welcome back everyone to Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast. Every episode, if you’re new to the show, our team of hosts brings you timely discussions on a variety of topics of interest to higher professionals who work in and with university housing, Residence Life, Residential Education, whatever you might call it. Our topic today is talking about career transitions in and out of Residence Life and into student affairs, vice versa, whatever is going on for you, we’re going to be talking about how to navigate that as best you can. We’ve explored this topic in a variety of angles and perspectives, and folks reflecting on their journeys, and I think it’s always time well spent to get the stories of a lot of folks who have made these kinds of transitions in and out of Residence Life to wherever they’re going.
We’ve had folks that have gone to private industry, or from vastly different institution sizes or public and private, all these sorts of things are all in the mix, but using the vehicle of our stories, we can really get some good insights, some good tactics and advice and resources and all that good stuff. I have Cory with me here today. We’ll start as we always do. Cory, if you want to give kind of a brief overview of your professional background and then we’ll kind of take a beat and then kind of talk more about your current role as we start to talk more about the transitions and things that you’ve done throughout your career.
Dr. Cory Shapiro:
Absolutely. Well, hello Dustin. Hello everyone. Thank you, it’s great to be here. My name is Cory Shapiro and I serve as the Assistant Dean of Students at Arizona State University on one of our many campuses. I have been at Arizona State University for the last 19 years. The first 18 has been in various mid-level positions as assistant director of Residential Life, Associate Director of Residential Life, various other kinds of assistant director roles. Yeah, Residential Life has been my background, like, I’m sure many of the individuals listening to this.
Just in the last year I’ve really been experiencing a lot outside of the world of housing, that two of the months during the summer when I had my role on an interim basis, I didn’t do any housing for two months, which was probably the first time in many, many years, if ever, that I’ve ever could say that. Stepping into the permanent role, I did regain some oversight of housing as part of my assistant dean role, and I’ve been doing that all year, working with on and off campus students, working with our university wide student governments and our multicultural communities of excellence and really just providing support to all of our student services on my campus, but working with the residence hall, still supervising some of our mid-level professionals.
I’ve had opportunities to step out and step in on multiple times over my career. Prior to ASU, I spent four years in the great state of Ohio working at Ohio State in housing. Prior to that, I was in Arizona where I worked in retail management for a year, not knowing I’d ever consider continuing my passion for housing where, yes, I was an RA in my undergrad, like many others have. I love the world of housing, but I also know the potential if you’re outside of housing as well at the same time. Thank you for having me.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. Well yeah, I appreciate you coming on because I think, yeah, you’ve got a great story to farm some insights from and reflections and everything, and I guess it’s interesting for you to really kind of put a fine point on this. If folks didn’t catch it, because I wasn’t kind of zeroed in on it myself, but I think a distinguishing thing for you is, it sounds like you made a lot of transitions within the same institution, a variety of roles and titles and different things. I think that’s even something to clarify of like, assistant director of blank, even within the same Residence Life department could be a vastly different kind of vibe and everything, but that is something where you may be working in institution, you love it, you love where you live, the people that you work with, you enjoy and all those sorts of things, but you’re looking to do something else.
I think that’s kind of a wrinkle to this, that I think will be interesting again to kind of look into. If you want to talk a little bit more about your current role, because it sounds like, obviously you had it in an interim basis and then you got it permanently, so if there’s anything kind of there I guess you want to reflect on, it sounds like you’ve got kind of a wider scope of your position now, that certainly builds upon so much of what you did before, and maybe even the idea of how you kind of got into that position, specifically, if you want to talk and take us in chronologically, like, how did you get into this position, what does it kind of entail currently, and I guess anything else that sort of makes sense in the scope of our discussion here around kind of transitions in Residence Life and student affairs?
Dr. Cory Shapiro:
Often, the longer you’re at an institution, the more committees you’re in, the more colleagues you have in other departments. Student services At Arizona State University, when you work in housing at our Tempe campus, you’re often really a specialist where you’re the housing person at the Tempe campus, but when you’re at one of the other three campuses, you are very much a generalist and you’re doing a lot more than housing on a day-to-day basis. Over my time at ASU, I spent the majority of my time at the Tempe campus, but I have been an assistant director and associate director at all every campus in the greater Phoenix area or Polytechnic campus or West Valley campus or Downtown campus, and it actually really helped set me up for success to eventually become the associate director for all four campuses.
My knowledge and my experience at the different campuses, we had an opening during the summer on a short-term basis as one of our assistant deans was out of the office for several months right around moving, right around kicking off the year, right around setting those tone for the first six weeks, and I was asked to step into that until she got back. Right around that time when I was about to go back to my associate director role at the housing, another position opened up permanently. After having already done it for two months, enjoyed that experience but missed housing very much.
I was offered that opportunity to go to one of… I know I’m not supposed to have favorites, but I love the West Valley campus because it really does have a small campus feel designed in the image of Oxford. 5,000 students on the campus, a thousand of which live on campus. I helped develop the residential experience more than 10 years ago, and now we have three residence halls there. I was there right when we opened our second one. Getting to be a part of that experience all over again, while also providing some direction to the housing team at our Downtown campus as well as West Valley and providing guidance to all the other campuses through being on the housing leadership team still.
I’m getting to do a lot of what I love to do in housing while spending my time walking around as a teen on the West Valley campus. I get the best of both worlds. Again, a lot of it was building the relationships, knowing what goes into student services beyond just housing. In fact, when I was at West Valley 12 years ago, I oversaw all of that orientation programs in addition to housing, so I became the person a lot of first year students would see when they were arriving to the university. I was greeting them for orientation and then welcoming them into the residence halls and it all worked well together, whereas at Tempe being such a large campus, there’s no way I could have done both of those at the same time. Now, I get to provide these experiences to other professional staff and set them up in a similar way that someone did for me many years ago.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I think there’s great details there, so I want to kind of expand on that as you’re sort of just reflecting on the transitions that you’ve had in your career, the idea of where you are now. You’re in a kind of smaller and more intimate environment, you can touch a lot of different aspects of the student experience. I guess, was that something that you’ve always known that you were looking for or you sort of refined? What was the sort of journey to know that this role at this time was more of what you’re looking for?
It sounds like after working at a lot of the different campuses, maybe you kind of knew better what you were looking for, I’m guessing maybe you’ve got a lot of different experiences so you knew maybe, oh I want more of this, I want less of that and you were able to keep refining as you go on. I don’t want to put too many words in your mouth kind of thing, but I guess, tell me more about how you were able to figure out what the next thing could or should be, what you kind of learned through each kind of transition, because it sounds like, yeah, you kind of ended up in a place where it sounds like you’re getting a lot of what you’re looking for both in the role, the institutional environment, all those sorts of different pieces. What was kind of the journey to get to this point in terms of just knowing better what it was you were exactly looking for?
Dr. Cory Shapiro:
Dustin, this is a great question and there’s a lot to it. I know when I was a community director or a residence hall director, I thought, well, I’m going to be a Res Life for life, therefore I’m going to be a community director, I’m going to be an assistant director, I’m going to be a director, I’m going to be an AVP. That’s not the realistic path for many of us, but I never really expected to get off that path, and so when I got orientation, that was out of the blue, during the pandemic, I actually oversaw all Covid initiatives for university housing and that was one of the final straws that eventually helped get me the FaceTime with people from all over the university where I became an associate director during the pandemic because of that.
I had no intention of being a dean, yet at the same point, I remember saying multiple times that, well, associate director for four years, I’d love to be the next director of Residential Life. I’ve told that to our director, I’m like, I have no rush for her to go anywhere because I love her, but I would like to be set up for success that I could be the logical next person. I remember saying, but the one exception would be becoming a dean over at the West Valley campus. I always knew when I left this West Valley campus that this is a place that I feel at home, this is a place where you can build the rapport with the students in such a different way that you know all of them by name, that you can show up to events out of the blue and they’re excited to see you, they all know who you are.
I just have never had a role like that outside of when I was a community director. I know I made the effort to create that when I was an assistant director or associate director, but with literally 400 plus community assistants and 17,000 residents living on campus, that wasn’t realistic for me. Now it is, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be back in housing full time down the road. I think this is a great take a breather for a little bit while doing something different, while still having dabbling in the housing world and being involved both at ASU and elsewhere. I’m excited for what I’m doing, I hope to get to do it for several years and eventually make my way back in the housing full time.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I guess what I’m hearing there is being open to possibilities, open to something else and what could be, and obviously that working in housing, Residence Life is a deep part of the core of your kind of professional being kind of thing, so you’re always going to resonate with doing that work, being open enough to not think that that is exclusively what you can or should do.
I think also the idea of making the most of where you’re at or making sure that wherever you’re at, that it is at least giving you something… That’s, I guess, kind an undercurrent for me of what I’m hearing is like, I’ll kind of try to segue this into my next question, but the idea of, you would hope that from the sounds of it just with your journey, that idea of, you’re getting so much of what is meaningful for you professionally where you are now, but you know that you also can be nurtured and fulfilled elsewhere, whether it would be, duty is thrust upon you, kind of thing of we need you Cory to do Director of Residence Life somewhere else.
You’d be like, I know that I can do good work there, I could be fulfilled, whatever, because I guess it’s the idea of, you were saying you thought that you were going to be locked in on a path, Res Life for life, traditional kind of steps up the ladder, you were open to other possibilities. Those have also given you other things that have been very meaningful to you.
I think if maybe you can ground all of my sort of synthesis or kind of observations of your journey, how have you observed other people navigating these things, because I think it’s either people are too rigid, they think they’ve just got to lock in and stay at the course, but then that can maybe end up with some negatives, or they’re always trying to jump to the next new shiny new thing? Just any reflections on the observations that you’ve seen of others, because I think that obviously it should be informing us of seeing how other people navigate things the way that you might want to try to emulate, or just sort of cautionary tales of other people of just like, oh, you never stuck around anywhere long enough to maybe get a really good idea, was just kind of like knee-jerk stuff. Anything that comes to mind, I guess, of how you’ve seen others navigate their sort of careers and how that’s helped inform your own choices?
Dr. Cory Shapiro:
Dustin, you just said it so well. I mean for me, I’ve come from a generation where I value being in one place for a while. I’ve been to only three schools my entire career. Four years, four years and going on almost 20 years now. On the other hand, I don’t expect that from other people. You’re right, I have had many of my staff who would come for one or two years and they think they’ve been there now forever, which is funny in a lot of ways, but at the same point, I get it, a lot of people are looking for different things than I was looking for when I was an entry level professional or a young mid-level professional.
I know if you were somewhere long enough, you can eventually get involved with the change, but they want that involvement right away, especially our younger professionals. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with, if it’s not the right fit to go try something else, I just would hope that they’d give it long enough and try to be a part of, embrace the culture of wherever they’re going. Hopefully, they find they love it and they’re there for at least a couple of years maybe before that next opportunity.
That’s another thing. I didn’t have the need or desire to necessarily move up. I was an assistant director for 14 years. I know a lot of the young professionals in my department asked me, how did you do it for so long? I continued to challenge myself. I continued to have different opportunities as an assistant director, whether doing leadership and development, whether going to a different campus, whether being a different part of our Tempe campus. I think I’m the only person in the department who can say I was responsible for every single residence hall at every single campus at some point during my time, but that’s not the norm anymore.
I think everyone needs to know what it is that they want to get out of an experience, and if they’re not getting it, they either need to ask some good questions to supervisors or to themselves and figure out, can they get that there. Often, they can if they ask the right question, if they take the right initiative, but if they can’t, well maybe they should look somewhere else. I know that’s something that’s very common today, but here’s a warning for everyone, the grass is not always greener on the other side.
I’ve had staff members leave ASU when they were disgruntled about how something was, and they realize in housing at another school it’s exactly the same, or they need to change their way of thinking if they want to come back, or they go to another department outside of housing and they find that some of what they had that they were frustrated about actually was better than living off campus doing something very different in another department. These are just some of my immediate reflections based on what you just said, because I do see it.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, that’s what you’d hope, like you said, people don’t make too kind of quick knee-jerk decisions about, oh, grass is greener somewhere else because it’s different, it’s better. They can do some examining your context, your environment, what’s available to you, and explore how you could adjust your role or talk to people or get involved in collateral things. Certainly, that’s sometimes if you’re just in a toxic environment, try to get out of that as soon as you can.
I think it is the idea of, we might be too quick to think that, oh, this place is awful and yeah it’s toxic, I’m just going to go, especially that idea of, if you get out of Residence Life, maybe you’re feeling burnt out or whatever, and then if you’re like, oh, it’s going to be better working in this other area, but then it’s like, oh, you liked it because you only got little forays every once in a while.
I could think about orientation or something, it’s like, oh, you work in Res Life and we do some orientation stuff or whatever else, and you’re like, you know what? I want to do orientation all the time, and it’s like, that might ruin it for you because you liked your little doses of it, because I think about that a lot with writing where I’ve had opportunities sometimes where, well, we do want to want to do more writing all the time as your full-time job and you are just constantly writing all day every day.
It’s like, once I’m presented with it, I’m like, I don’t know if I could do that, honestly, I do like writing a lot but I don’t know if I could do that all the time. That’s what kind of came to mind is that idea of you’ll get maybe tempted in a moment of frustration with one thing or another, you go off and it’s like, okay, well now I’m just doing this one thing all day every day and it sort of loses its magic because I don’t just get to have fun during an orientation welcome session. It’s like, no, you have to do all the grunt work of the procedural administrative aspects of it or whatever, so it’s just like, yeah, every job has aspects that you’re going to like more than other aspects of it.
I think so much of this, I get, if you can kind of expand on this, it seems like so much of this is going to be around, as the individual certainly just being very communicative, being curious, being open, those sorts of things. Take either angle of this, maybe on the individual level or when you’ve been in leadership positions, overseeing people, how you receive that, how you try to help facilitate people to maybe move them more towards things that they’re going to get some good experiences with, get some good insights from. Do you feel like the idea of, you’d hope that you’d just have good communication between both sides in that equation? I don’t know if you have anything specific you would reflect on on either in those instances how you’ve pursued things that sort of helped expand your horizons and better inform your choices, and or how as a leader you need to try to help facilitate those kinds of journeys?
Dr. Cory Shapiro:
Sure. Yeah, I see. I think a lot of it ties even to professional development. What ways in which everyone is staying engaged? That doesn’t necessarily mean, go to a conference, but that does mean seeing what else is out there and what can tie into your role. I remember at one point in my career I used to spend a couple of hours, two or three hours a week in a different department while still working for housing, and I at least got an experience. That was something very different. One year I helped develop, at ASU, I worked directly with our vice president for student affairs to create a summer camp for students at one of our campuses that was not Tempe.
Just getting the opportunity to work with so many departments that had nothing to do with housing, recognizing that not all the students were part of a residential camp, some of them were day camps. I learned so much about the academic side and we worked very closely with a lot of other departments, not just the academic ones. I know, for me, that was just one example, and I see that from some of my staff who are looking for… Some of them want to be involved with Affinity so we get them on game day committees. Some of them want to get more involved with student activities, not that they’re not already doing a lot of that in housing, but we’ll get them on different committees or to go spend a few hours here or there.
I remember at every school I’ve worked at, there’s been opportunities that if someone was passionate about a certain thing and they didn’t see that in their day-to-day work, talk to a supervisor, see if they can get that experience somehow. As I reflect to master’s programs, graduate programs, I don’t necessarily think just because someone has a master’s degree, they should be a shoo-in for a rollover, a bachelor’s degree candidate for a position, but I do say when they have had internships and practicums and different experiences and know how to tie theory to practice, those are some of those skill sets that a lot of our staff who didn’t go to graduate school won’t otherwise have, and it will make our staff more marketable for different opportunities.
I think it all comes down to making sure to talk to your supervisor about those professional development opportunities, and if it’s not going to a conference, maybe it is getting involved with the professional association and being on one of their committees on a regional level. There’s so many ways to see what else is out there, and depending on what you’ve experienced, you might want to give something a try full-time at some point, especially if you’re so passionate about whatever it is.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, that’s what I think, just awareness, information, the ability as an individual in this field, any profession really, I guess, but being able to make informed choices as you’re applying and interviewing from the jump knowing, okay, this type of position based on what it describes and the institution, its size, if it’s public, private, whatever, I know from the jump that this is going to be more aligned with what I’m looking for, and then I can ask the right questions during an interview to make sure that my sort of understanding is correct.
If you can keep refining that through volunteering and doing something at your institution or with a professional organization or anything else that you might pursue, yeah, you’re just like, you’re honing. For me, I even worked with a career coach, just an independent person, and they were helping me to better articulate more precisely what it is that I’m looking for. I want to work as part of a team and I found that I enjoy working at a smaller company versus a larger one. I’ve worked at some that are either publicly traded companies or eyeing that as sort of eventuality, and it’s just like, I don’t like that as much.
I do like sometimes the scrappier, smaller, startup kind of organizations and even sometimes a team at a college university has that vibe, it’s just depending on how they’re funded or if they aren’t just newer or whatever. If you can know that and just keep honing that and refining and having really clear intentionality about what best role you serve on a team, what type of team, what size team. Yeah, it’s all time well spent to be doing that sort of almost firsthand primary research of what it is that I’m looking for.
I think what I’m also hearing from you is, I’m just imagining who might be listening to this, whether it is the person on this journey making these transitions or the people that might be helping, supervisors and stuff that might be facilitating these journeys, that professional development piece, I think there’s always that right balance of certainly the individual has to take agency and sort of ownership of their own journey, but how do you maybe present opportunities or give options or try to encourage folks to get involved with different things?
Maybe there’s no shortage of things to do at an institution or elsewhere of professional organizations and stuff. I think trying to at least do your part as somebody who might be needing to nurture the professional development of individuals to try to present them with things that could be available for them to look into. On that piece though, as we’re starting to wrap up, other advice? Again just take whatever sort of angle, perspective you might want on this, but just advice for navigating career transitions in or out of Residence Life. What advice would you give to folks as we’re kind of winding down here?
Dr. Cory Shapiro:
I mean, I think one of the big things is, you don’t have to go to your supervisor, but at least go to a mentor, have someone that is there to make sure that you have a cheerleader, that you have someone to help you maybe even think outside the box. What were you most passionate about? I know I have staff members who’ve gone to become the either flight attendants or teachers or honestly taking a year off and just traveling in between jobs, and they’re doing what honestly their heart tells them to do. Now, some of them have reached out afterwards saying, okay, I’m ready to come back.
I think you need to know exactly what you want, and if you can’t get that in your current role, you have so many skill sets that are transferable right off the bat. Know what those skill sets are, what some of those challenges that you’ve learned to overcome and how you can articulate that. I mean, yes, a coach could be a wonderful way to start, but you need to know exactly what you want as you look and see what opportunities are out there.
They may have those opportunities at your institution. It may be in another state or country closer to family, maybe you’re looking for two careers, you have a dual search because of a partner, there could be so many other things that you’re looking at, but you definitely need to make sure that you’re doing what you want to do and that you’re passionate for it. I recognize burnout is certainly out there, but you also need to figure out, is this something you can resolve by staying in your department? Because sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it’s no. I mentioned it before, the grass is not always greener on the other side. I’ve seen staff go outside of housing, I’ve seen staff come in the housing, leaving other careers too, so it goes both ways.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Well, yeah, and I guess something I just thought of is like, for me, I found working with independent career coach very helpful because I think at least obviously the communication is key here, but working with your supervisor, sometimes it can be that idea of like, well, I don’t want to lose you or they’re going to give you the best advice or be very motivated, or you as a supervisor may need to just recognize where it’s like, okay, I’m kind of out of my depth here, I don’t want to hold you back or limit your sort of vista of opportunities here, so let me try to help you find a mentor who is totally objective, is going to have maybe an outside perspective and going to help be your Sherpa and your guide here to go through your career transitions and stuff.
That idea of at least starting from a place, reaching out to your supervisor because they could be like, yeah, we love working with you, you’re amazing, let’s try to find you an opportunity within our team that’s going to be more fulfilling for you, or within this institution or the division of student affairs or whatever. That idea of, yeah, because obviously I like working with you, you’re great, so let’s keep you and try to keep you happy and keep you doing stuff that’s meaningful for you.
If it’s like, okay, I’m going to add to my depth here, depending on what it is that you’re looking for, where you’re at in life or whatever else, it’s like, let’s not let ego get in the way. Please go find… It can help maybe make some intros for you to a great mentor who could kind of guide you and share their own reflections of their own story and stuff. I feel like we’re getting a very good kind of comprehensive sort of viewpoint here on some good advice and good tactical pieces here and kind of steps to work through, and just a lot of good stuff to consider. Final question here. If there’s any kind of pieces of, or resources, like different pieces that people could pursue, tools they could use to help facilitate this sort of journey, these transitions, figuring out where and what they may want to do, any resources that we could point folks to?
Dr. Cory Shapiro:
I already mentioned about the value of mentors and supervisors, and I’ll come back to that in just a second, but I also think if you know what you want and you know where you want to be, I wish there was just a magic website you can go to. There are helpful websites. If you’re going to a different geographic area, make sure you check out that cost of living calculator over there. While there’s not an exact website for if you’re ready for that next step, or a search or this or that, there’s lots of great amazing resources out there, but I think the best resource is a person or the people that are there for you. If you go to a leadership conference of any sorts, if you’re going to a [inaudible 00:31:17] or NASPA or ACPA or any of the regional conferences, have someone that knows a lot of people introduce you to a bunch of people while you’re at those conferences.
For supervisors out there, you may be in both categories here, so that’s considering a transition as well as someone who supervises. For those supervisors, I always am concerned when I hear employees… My background surprisingly is actually in the human resources world. I never mentioned that before, that was my undergrad degree. I always hear stories of people that don’t want to tell supervisors they’re searching because they feel like they’re going to get blackballed or they’re going to be pushed out the moment they say it. That shouldn’t be the way things are. In fact, if you tell a mentor or a supervisor you have a close rapport with, that you’re searching, they should be going out of their way to set you up for success. If you’re one of those supervisors, make sure that your staff feel comfortable having honest conversations about searches.
I know I have a staff member getting a master’s degree or getting a doctorate at the end of a year and it’s only January, and they tell me that, I will be doing everything I can to not only help them get that doctorate, but have a job lined up at the same time. It’s all about the communication too. Lots of different things going on in my head right now about how supervisors can best support their staff, as well as how a staff member can seize those opportunities and everything. If you’re going through this, I wish you all the best, but definitely work with your mentors, they are there for you.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, and I think it’s such a great place to end it on here because I think that idea of supervisors and folks wherever you are should be these kind of conduits, whether they’re providing, if they’re sort of the vessels for support and guidance, whatever else, or they should be able to bring other things to you. I think the onus being on the individual who is looking to make transitions, you do need to hone that ask as clear as you can.
It’s like, well, I’d like somebody who works in this kind of area, this and that, yeah, they can maybe make some intros or be kind of guiding you, and certainly just the conferences and things can be a great resource here as well. That idea of being in those spaces and places and having somebody who can be a guide, making that sort of very direct ask of like, hey, I know we’re going to a [inaudible 00:33:49], we are going to NASPA or we’re going to whatever, if you could help introduce me and introduce me to these type of people that work in these type of positions or whatever.
That sort of really clear specific ask, I think, will be that much more effective. I just really appreciate all that you’ve shared, all you kind of reflected on, and motivated and inspired folks with here, because I think these are tough journeys, but they’re important ones, and I think as much as we can just keep getting good insights and things from folks sharing their own unique stories and everything, it all just is really helpful. Yeah, just thank you so much for hanging out and sharing all that you did. It’s been great chatting with you.
Dr. Cory Shapiro:
Thank you for having me, Dustin. It’s been great, thanks.
