On this episode of ResEdChat, join our host Noah Montague and guest Ayanna Ross, Associate Director of Residence Life at Miami University of Ohio, to talk about student leadership development. Student leadership is integral to the college student experience, but how does it look in residence halls? How does identity come into play for students and staff as they are growing as leaders? Are we really doing enough? Noah and Ayanna discuss these topics, share insights into leadership theory, tell stories, and talk about tangible ways to help students grow as leaders while they are living with us in the halls.
Guest: Ayanna Ross (She/Her), Associate Director of Residence Life, Miami University
Host: Noah Montague
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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:
Noah Montague:
Welcome back to Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast, the platform to showcase people doing great work and talk about hot topics in residence life and college student housing. So my name is Noah Montague and I use he, him, his pronouns, and today I am your host. As you all know, if you’ve been listening to my podcast a little bit, I like to say that I am a storyteller by trade and that the stories that I choose to tell and focus on are those that center the student experience and that of residential students in particular, which makes me all the more excited about today’s topic in general. I love talking about leadership, so I’m really excited to get to do that today.
So with that, I kind of spoiled us, but we’re going to be talking about student leadership development today and what that can look like in the residence hall specifically. In my role currently, I am deeply involved in student leadership development with my living learning community where I teach different leadership theories and just help students learn about themself and others as leaders and how they fit in to that space. That said, it really is all of residence life staff’s job to look at leadership development and student leadership and because we all oversee student leaders.
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah.
Noah Montague:
Whether it be RAs, whether it be hall councils, whether it be any of those different places, we are working with student leaders actively within the residence halls. So with that, I am so, so, so excited to welcome our guests today because we’re going to get to talk about leadership pretty intensely and I’m excited about that, but I’m going to let them go ahead and introduce themself.
Ayanna Ross:
All right. Hi you all. I’m Ayanna Ross. I am an associate director in residence life. I’ve been working in residence life since my graduate career, so 2018. So yeah, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know all the different students and professionals that I’ve worked with over the years, but I would say the development definitely started when I was an RA, and I was an RA back in 2013, first time sophomore year of college. So yeah, I’ve been doing this work almost my entire adult life.
Noah Montague:
Yeah, I think about that sometimes too, just how long I’ve been doing this at this point.
Ayanna Ross:
I would say the development really started when I was a student and realizing that I had an opportunity as an RA to be a part of other people’s development.
Noah Montague:
For sure. I think that starts us off so perfectly then in we’re talking about development, we’re talking about student leadership, but what do we mean when we’re talking about that? Whenever I start any of these conversations, I like to kind of define, just give us a baseline, so what do we mean when we’re talking about student leadership in a residential setting to you?
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah. And so for me, student leadership can look like what we’re used to. It can look like the hall council president or executive board. It can look like a resident assistant who’s knocking on your door doing rounds, but it can also look like that student who likes to show up, who’s always super involved and shows up to all the programs, whether it’s a building program or it’s just their RA hosting a study night. It can look like that student who is hanging out at the desk and wants to get to know everyone who walks through the door.
I think that we see student leaders in a lot of different ways, but overall I think it’s that growth, right? That growth that we see from that scared first-year student who’s really trying to get out there and get to know what is this campus really going to be like, how am I going to meet my friends, to seeing them stand in their power, make decisions, not second guess themselves, finding who they are. I think that’s all of that is a part of student development and being a student leader.
Noah Montague:
Yeah, I’d agree completely. I think for me, something that stood out in your answer is that participation that you talked about, like being an active part of the community. Because when we think about student leaders, it’s so easy to be like, “The RAs in the community, those are the student leaders.” But the student who’s coming to the program regularly is actively choosing to engage with that community, whether or not they think they’re doing so as a leader, that participation is leadership in so many ways that we’re not really actively thinking about, and I know they’re not either because I will grill it into them that they’re acting as leaders when they choose to participate. But I think about that a lot with that space and how students are choosing to participate and what maybe is making them not in those spaces.
Ayanna Ross:
The engagement. We’ve definitely seen engagement shift. And people like to say that it was COVID, but if you were doing this prior to 2020, then you know that the shift actually started around 2018, 2019. And so COVID wasn’t the reason, but it definitely highlighted some of the issues that we experienced in terms of student engagement and our ability to develop student leaders.
Noah Montague:
Yeah. COVID always feels like a very easy… As humans, we look for something to blame the thing.
Ayanna Ross:
Oh yeah.
Noah Montague:
And COVID feels like a very easy way to go about that as if that engagement wasn’t changing before that and as if students weren’t choosing to engage in different ways before the pandemic hit.
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah. And to be honest, I think students were asking for more virtual, more grab-and-go things prior to, and COVID was actually the catalyst for a lot of us getting our senior leadership to allow us to do it. Students were already asking for it.
Noah Montague:
Yeah. I think COVID was so interesting in that capacity because it kind of gave us that argument.
Ayanna Ross:
Oh yeah.
Noah Montague:
In a way that maybe we shouldn’t have needed because students were asking for it, to your own point.
Ayanna Ross:
But I think we also have to acknowledge that those of us who are in these entry-level positions, because I was in an entry-level position at the time that COVID hit, I was in the first six months of my first full-time role when everything shut down. And what I can say is that for me, we experience, and I’ve been at a few different institutions now and what I’ve experienced is the people who are in those entry-level roles are so far removed from the people who are in those senior leadership roles. And those people in those senior leadership roles, it’s been so long since they were in an entry-level role that they don’t actually understand sometimes why the advocacy is happening. And so it sounds like your living staff is whining, but they’re not. They are advocating and they’re reflecting back to you the complaints and the issues that they’re experiencing from their students.
Noah Montague:
For sure. I was a first semester grad student when COVID hit, so I feel that pretty much. And I had my zone and that’s where I stuck during that time. But thinking about that leadership development as we’ve talked about it so far with students like engaging and participating in the different roles they can have, how do you see that type of leadership development differing in the residence halls as compared to maybe a student org or in the academic setting? How do you see that differing?
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah, I would say that was really highlighted for me probably in my previous role when I was a resident director. And for me, what that looked like, when I’m talking to my colleagues who were in maybe Office of Black Student Development or in sorority and fraternity life, what they are doing is crucial work, right? They’re doing trainings, they’re doing workshops, they’re helping students plan programs, right? But when you are a resident director, when you are working with resident assistants, you are not only working with them on programming and developing budgets for these things, but you’re also working with them on creating boundaries, not only personally but professionally.
I can’t tell you how many RAs I’ve walked through a difficult personal time, whether it was something that they were struggling to be honest with their parents about or if it was something that they were struggling with in a friendship or with another RA, it’s a lot of coaching, I would say, within what we do as residence life professionals. So we are seeing them, yes, at their best when they’re so excited about their program and their good grades and their X, Y, Z, but we’re also seeing them when they’re coming in and somebody just broke their heart. And we’re also seeing them when they’ve had their absolute worst day.
And I think that is what really differs from other areas is like we are their home for the majority of the year, and so we get to see them in ways that not everyone on campus gets to see them. So there are things that sometimes we know about them that we didn’t ask to know, but because we have a one-on-one with them every week or bi-weekly, we just have more access. And I think we create spaces or we at least try to create spaces where they feel comfortable unloading and talking to us about what’s on their plate so that we can help them navigate all of it.
Noah Montague:
Yeah.
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah.
Noah Montague:
Definitely. That brought up a couple thoughts for me, particularly two things that I say to my RAs as we go through the year, one of which being there’s a really big difference, and you touched on this a little bit between what I call head work and heart work.
Ayanna Ross:
Oh yeah.
Noah Montague:
We are the heart work part of campus in that… And the other thing that I say is that anything that can happen to a human being can happen in a residence hall. And because of that-
Noah Montague:
Yeah. Because that, we not only have to be prepared to do that, but have to work with RAs through those things and students learning who they are as an integral part of leadership development as well and navigating that space. So this last year, I helped one of my students through… He was having a conflict of faith, that became our one-on-one and have a long conversation in which we were going to be talking about, “Okay, what are we doing for the community? What are we doing? How’s the program coming?” And instead, it was a very different conversation and it was a crucial conversation to have, one, because this is a student that now felt comfortable having this conversation with me, and two, because that’s just what he needed to talk about.
Ayanna Ross:
That self-discovery is a huge part of growing as a leader.
Noah Montague:
For sure. Yeah.
Ayanna Ross:
Self-awareness is a key component of being a good leader. And so as we’re developing student leaders, we want them to be discovering things about themself. We want them to be questioning the things that they knew previously. And so I think it’s so amazing, like you said, I think it just highlights the depth of the relationships we’re able to build.
Noah Montague:
Definitely. It’s unique in that capacity because what you brought up is that they live here and we see them when they are excited about the thing they’re planning, and we see them when they are awake at 2 A.M. because they have a final the next day that they forgot about. And it’s all of those different aspects of a person play into how they lead in the halls differently than when they’re showing up to their club meeting after class.
Ayanna Ross:
You can only hide your truth for so long is kind of the thing that I often talk to my mentees about of find your truth and start living in that as soon as possible.
Noah Montague:
And we get to be a part of helping them feel comfortable in that truth in a different way, just being in residence life.
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah.
Noah Montague:
I love my job
Ayanna Ross:
Yes. And I think that’s something that is important to say, “Yes, we have heavy things that we deal with, but there’s a reason that there are Res Lifers. There’s a reason why there are people who’ve never worked in another functional area.” I’ve never worked in another functional area. And it’s because even when residence life is the worst, and there have been times when I’ve worked at other places and I’ve been crying at my desk at 12 A.M. and-
Noah Montague:
There are times.
Ayanna Ross:
Yes, there are times when I’ve been at my desk crying at 12 A.M. because RA training is about to start and I need to get all of my things together and I’m willing to be there at 12 A.M. because not only because I’m willing to do what’s necessary so that my RAs have a good experience, but because I’m willing to collaborate with my other live-in professionals and make sure not all of us have to be up at 12 A.M. Only one of us have to suffer tonight.
Noah Montague:
Be there for each other.
Ayanna Ross:
Yes.
Noah Montague:
Lovely. Well, with that, I think that going into my next question that I have, we’ve touched on theory a little bit just tangentially within this conversation, but how, if at all, do you see theory showing up in residential leadership development and how you go about it?
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah, I would say theory shows up everywhere in almost everything that we do.
Noah Montague:
I knew that would be the answer too, but I wanted to ask it all the same.
Ayanna Ross:
I would say as someone who was a psychology undergrad, everything we do is involved. You know what I mean? Everything, whether it’s on how people learn, whether it’s on identity development, whether it’s just meeting people where they’re at, it is a lot that goes into what we do. And I think people talk a lot about… People don’t like challenge and support, but challenge and support is a lot of what we are challenging their old ideas and supporting them and becoming new versions of themselves.
Noah Montague:
For sure.
Ayanna Ross:
We are doing that with ourselves, with our supervisors, with our supervisees. We are constantly questioning. And I think that questioning comes from a place of wanting better, of wanting people to feel supported, feel like they have what they need and feel confident in who they are so that they can persist to graduation.
Noah Montague:
Definitely.
Ayanna Ross:
So yeah, everything we do is theory.
Noah Montague:
I completely, completely agree in-
Ayanna Ross:
Theory to practice.
Noah Montague:
In so, so, so many ways that everything that we do is theory to practice in partnering with students and their work, being learning partnership and exploring that space and being able to be there with them as they figure the things out like in and of itself is theory. As you know in my own role, I have the opportunity to specifically teach theory to students so that they learn some leadership theories. And one of the ones that we’ve already talked about a little bit is the social change model of leadership development that very specifically highlights a concept of citizenship as a part of what it means to be a leader. That meaning being an active participant in the place that you live in order to create positive change in that space. And it refutes a lot of voluntarism and going to neighborhoods to fix things for that neighborhood. It is no, be in where you are, learn [inaudible 00:16:20]-
Ayanna Ross:
So present.
Noah Montague:
In community, be present in your community so that you can learn what it needs. And that in and of itself is how I work to teach that leadership in my space as well.
Ayanna Ross:
And I feel-
Noah Montague:
I wish more people did, and that’s not even be patting myself on the back, but-
Ayanna Ross:
No, but that’s like I think if you’re going to be effective in a role like this, if your job is to be the resident director of a community, then you should be asking what are the needs of this community?
Noah Montague:
Of the community.
Ayanna Ross:
You should not be coming up with solutions for problems that no one has said is a problem. You’re changing things just to change things. And I’ve always been a strong advocate for whenever people… People often will come to me and be like, “Can you tell us? How do you think Black students will feel about this?” “Go ask them. I can’t be the one”-
Noah Montague:
You have to be that spokesperson.
Ayanna Ross:
Right. I can’t be the voice for Black students. I need you to ask a Black student in the Black scholars community what their experience is and why they’re not engaging with your materials. Because I can tell you what I feel the answer is, but that doesn’t make it the right answer.
Noah Montague:
The amount of people in my time who have asked, “What does the queer population here want?” I’m like, “Let’s bring them in to talk to them.”
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah. Bring them to the table.
Noah Montague:
I’m like, “Yes, I’m openly queer as a professional, but I don’t go here. I’m not a student here. I don’t know what you’re looking for.”
Ayanna Ross:
I don’t know how many times I’ve said I don’t go here.
Noah Montague:
And I do objectively because I’m very involved in that space and I advise organizations, but it’s like to make the changes that students want to see, we need to be asking the students and therefore we need to be empowering them to use their voices to lead their own communities. And that’s our job to me.
Ayanna Ross:
Yes. And whenever a student’s like, “Oh, I hope I’m not bothering you.” It is 100% my job to be here for you, to coach you through this, to provide resources. Not a bother. It is 100% our job.
Noah Montague:
Never a bother.
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah.
Noah Montague:
Thank you for calling.
Ayanna Ross:
Thank you for giving me something to do other than to-
Noah Montague:
thank you for giving me something to do. I don’t want to do my paperwork.
Ayanna Ross:
At all.
Noah Montague:
I don’t want to send my 15th email of the hour. Please, tell me how I can help you.
Ayanna Ross:
[inaudible 00:18:57] looking like this, but I would love a yap session, please.
Noah Montague:
Please. I mean it’s more fun for me,
Ayanna Ross:
But I think a lot of times-
Noah Montague:
[inaudible 00:19:06] more fulfilling.
Ayanna Ross:
Yes, and I think a lot of times that the connection that a lot of professionals are looking for and that engagement they feel like they don’t have, the follow-up question is how often are you logging out of your computer and just being available? How often are you as the person living in your community walking around and just knocking on a door, not for any particular reason, just to say hi?
Noah Montague:
Just to connect.
Ayanna Ross:
Just to connect.
Noah Montague:
Just to be present in the community.
Ayanna Ross:
Building that rapport is… Yes, you need to be a part of the community so that the community recognizes you and feels safe and supported enough to actually bring problems to you.
Noah Montague:
Exactly. So that they feel safe to be those leaders in the community.
Ayanna Ross:
Literally, they have to feel safe in order to feel like they can lead in that space or even engage in that space.
Noah Montague:
Because why would they if they don’t?
Ayanna Ross:
Exactly, would you? Yeah.
Noah Montague:
And I’ve been in many communities where I didn’t feel safe to participate, so I didn’t.
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah.
Noah Montague:
And I’m very privileged to have that where I am now as well as trying to be able to give that to the students that I serve, I think is pretty crucial. But I think that kind of goes in… You’re setting me up perfect with these questions. I don’t know, it’s almost like you knew what they were going to be ahead of time. But with that, talking about identity and talking about student belonging in that space, what role does identity play in how students experience leadership in residence halls and how maybe can we be more intentional about growing those inclusive leaders in our halls?
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah. When I think about it, I really think about those “unexpected leaders”, right? And unexpected leaders are just people who aren’t cis white men. Unexpected leaders, that is what they are. They are people that no one expected to lead. Everyone can be a leader in their own lane, right? So for me, I think that leadership development, for me as a Black woman, it has really looked like owning the parts of my personality that I know will be misinterpreted no matter what I do. I think it has looked like self-awareness and self-reflection. It has looked like actively seeking out constructive feedback and applying that feedback. It has often sometimes looked like just being frustrated and upset with a process and then trying to identify why, right? And if that frustration is coming from a place of I was not considered in this decision and this decision directly impacts me, that is one of those things as a leader, that makes me feel like I have no power.
So if I’m in a position to lead or I’m in control of a project and then someone above me or laterally is pooping on my project and on my process and how I’m going about doing it, but they’re not contributing to the process, what am I supposed to do with that? So as a leader, I have to reflect on, one, why are they doing that? Two, why is it bothering me? And three, what can I do about it? And so for me, I’m always… I like to say that I’m solution-oriented but not in a toxic positivity way, but more so in a way of I would like to get out of the mistake phase as quick as possible. I want to get to the knowing so that I can get to the informing so I can get to the doing.
Noah Montague:
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. I think for me, I think so much about listening when it comes to these spaces, and that is in my own identities as a white man and a queer man in that space and what that looks like and where I can provide additional voice to students and give that space. But also, I view this conversation particularly so important in challenging other white students in my community and my spaces and being able to be a part of that challenge and empowering other students to be able to have that voice and be a part of the community and thinking about queerness in particularly, I find that other students in the LGBTQ community find me on campus, that happens.
Ayanna Ross:
Just like they [inaudible 00:24:03].
Noah Montague:
And I’m sure that you experienced similar for the Black students on campus. And being that role model is very important to me, but also setting those boundaries is very important to me, which then empowers them to be able to set those boundaries as well, particularly in my… Unexpected feels like the wrong word, but maybe unintentional, heavy involvement in Miami’s LGBTQ community. I have learned and watched and from my own experience within leadership development, queer students are so often just trying to survive that they never get to the point. And I don’t like being in a detriment mindset, but it’s like I have to make it through high school, I just have to get out of here and then I can be out, and then I can be safe.
Ayanna Ross:
And I can be my own person.
Noah Montague:
And be my own person, not even thinking about I can be a leader, I can be me. And that takes a lot of time in my own-
Ayanna Ross:
You have space to rest, right? And when you’re constantly thinking about your survival, do you have space to rest and imagine when you’re just trying to survive?
Noah Montague:
When you’re just trying to survive, you’re not thinking about how can I lead? You’re thinking about how can I-
Ayanna Ross:
Make it from this minute to the next?
Noah Montague:
Yeah. And that’s hard. And COVID exasperated that too in different ways. And the times are exasperating that in different ways, but I think it is crucial for residence life staff to be thinking about all of that when we enter into the space because all of our students experience leadership differently. Some have never thought about it.
Ayanna Ross:
But I think we also have to think about one of those things when I think about leadership development is one thing that I… And it’s not that I never thought about it, but I didn’t consider myself a leader for a very long time. I was a whole leadership intern in college, and I would not say that I was a leader on campus. I would not say that about myself, but other people would have and did, right? And I think one of the big reasons why is because I was marketed that this is what a leader is. This is the credentials of a leader. People listened to leaders. I never felt listened to. I never felt heard. I never felt like people cared about what Ayanna specifically was going through or had to say, right? And so when I switched that narrative, and I remember talking to someone maybe a year ago, and just my understanding of power and leadership now is you cannot take it from me because you did not give it to me.
And I am a leader in every room I step in and that’s just because that’s who I am as a person, because I think I’m strategic and I go about things in a way that show care, but also we’re going to do things that make sense, right? And so I see myself as a leader now in a way that I didn’t then because then I was thinking about everything that was working against me and why no one was giving me opportunities to be a leader instead of seeing myself already presently leading, advocating, being a person that others could rely on, and a person that other people knew was going to go into those spaces and speak truth no matter how uncomfortable. And so that is a part of my professional brand, and I’m sure that there are people who are going to see this who know me, who are going to be like, “Yeah.”
Noah Montague:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Ayanna Ross:
That makes sense.
Noah Montague:
And I think that you talking about leadership in that way and leader as an identity is so interesting, particularly with students and particularly with marginalized students and in the way that we have established leader and leadership and the image of a leader being that cis white man that you’re talking about-
Ayanna Ross:
That charismatic leader [inaudible 00:28:15].
Noah Montague:
Charismatic, like going for it.
Ayanna Ross:
Charismatic leader.
Noah Montague:
And one, it creates that image that is the only person that can be a leader, but it also creates the image that that person is the only one that can bestow leadership.
Ayanna Ross:
There it is.
Noah Montague:
On somebody else.
Ayanna Ross:
And it’s like unless someone with this positional power says you’re a leader, then-
Noah Montague:
You’re not. As if every theory and every practice and every space just says you have to be a part of the community and actively participate in order to be a leader. But we’re not listening to that.
Ayanna Ross:
No. We’re going with the social definition and it’s more so, and I think a lot of times, which I don’t think it’s incorrect, people think about leaders as the people who inspire feeling, positive or negative, right? They think about those people who spark those super emotional responses, but that’s not always a… Sometimes a leader is the person who plants the seed and makes someone else do something they wouldn’t have normally done like go to a program.
Noah Montague:
Yeah.
Ayanna Ross:
All you had to do was invite your roommate and now you, your roommate and your whole floor are a part of this kick-ass community who have just… You’re connected and you’re never going to part, and these are your best friends for the next 10 years. And it’s because you took a risk and you asked some random girl to go to lunch or to go to a program.
Noah Montague:
You made the effort.
Ayanna Ross:
You made the effort. And I think that’s what leadership really is. It’s making the effort.
Noah Montague:
Yeah, I completely agree. Well, I guess with that, we’ve talked like that. We’ve gotten pretty big with the conversation as we went about it. But what maybe are, to bring us back down for a second, some practical ways that supervisors and residence life, whether it be resident directors, whether it be folks in positions like yours can foster that leadership development at the university.
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah. I think for me, what I have found effective is conversations like this, truly. Creating space and time in your schedule so that one, two hours a week, you’re able to genuinely just say, “You know what? I’m going to have my door open. I’m going to go out into the community, and my goal is to talk to one, two, however many people that I’ve not talked to before.” We had this thing a part of our residential curriculum at a previous institution where we had to talk to five students that we hadn’t talked to before within a residential curriculum block. And honestly, it’s pretty easy to do, especially where we were conduct officers. Sometimes I was able to fold that into some of the just lower level conversations that I was having.
And I think using, if you’re someone who is in a position where you are having regular meetings with students, using those first five minutes, regardless of your meeting with a student for rapport building. Ask them what they have going on. If you don’t know their major, that’s a good start. What are they studying? What’s on their plate? What are they excited about? Really genuinely make an effort to get to know them in terms of supervision and people that I supervise in terms of development with those folks, I have found that using one-on-one time to do focus training has been really helpful. So I’m going to use this example and I really hope she sees it, but I have a person that I worked with who was an RA.
I worked with her as an RA for a year. She was an amazing RA, but she was someone who had kind of a high pitch voice. She was around my height, so about five foot. She was very petite, and so people did not take her seriously. And so when she was approaching situations, oftentimes students would be disrespectful to her, dismissive to her. And so we would use our one-on-ones to role play. I was like, “Okay, I’m going to be the student. I’m going to give you a hard time. You’re going to come in this office and you’re going to give me a noise complaint.” That is the goal. You are going to give me a noise complaint and you’re going to follow all the procedures and you’re going to walk away not feeling impacted, not crying. This is the goal of the training, right?
And so we did this a couple times. Sometimes we would get out of the office, we would do walk and talks down by the beach. And what I found is not only did I get to know her personally and we’re able to keep in contact now, I even worked at that institution in well over a year now, she became an assistant hall director this year.
Noah Montague:
That’s so exciting.
Ayanna Ross:
And so I think that for her and for me and for us, taking time to really tell her, “I know that you can do this,” and not just saying it, but giving her the tools. Yes, she had her behind closed doors training as all the RAs did, but that was not sufficient for her. She needed to understand from me how would I approach it, because I also was a short Black woman approaching situations where people would not take me seriously. And some of it is your tone, some of it is your face, some of it is the way that you’re going about it. You’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry to be here.” And so some of it is just the way that you carry yourself in those situations.
And so I’m happy to say that she was able to grow a lot over our time together. It’s because she wanted to. It’s because she set a goal for herself to feel more confident, and she wanted to be the president of a student organization and da, da, da. And so the things that we were working on were to get her there. And so making sure that you create space for your supervisees or for students in general to say, “This is what I want.” And when you have the time, when you have the skills, offer your skills, offer your time, invest in them.
Noah Montague:
Yeah, I completely, completely agree. And I don’t know that I could have said that better, but I also hope she was listening. That would be really cool if she’s here. But I think the only thing that is going on in my mind right now is, again, that listening piece of everything, like creating that space you shared and one-on-ones and if you were meeting with students regularly, creating that time to get to know them is so, so, so important. And I think it is something that we don’t do enough. Particularly, I think about, I have a similar story. I had a student a few years ago while I was in grad school who was an RA, who I took a lot of time to get to know her and her major, but also the why behind her major.
She was an inclusive special education major. I learned about her sister and her family and why those decisions were made and where that passion came from. She ended up becoming a graduate student in residence life at another school in student affairs and higher education program, and now is working full-time in the field as well. And that isn’t to say that every conversation where we invite a student to tell us about themselves will lead to them joining the field-
Ayanna Ross:
But?
Noah Montague:
But it empowers them to ask those questions about why do I want to do this thing? What is it that I want to do with my life? And what is it that I want to do while I’m here? And I think about that a lot as it relates to I’ve seen some professionals in my life will be almost offended when a student tells them that something was wrong or that they did something wrong or that-
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah, it becomes personal.
Noah Montague:
The school did something wrong or that something is wrong when in reality that’s a student that is comfortable enough with you to advocate for themself. Saying something is wrong is self-advocacy. And I think that the tangible advice, maybe the biggest piece would be to encourage that, students should be telling us when things can be better, and we should be inviting that, not telling them, “No, we know what we’re doing, just move on.”
Ayanna Ross:
Because we don’t know everything. And I think the more that we as professionals, particularly within higher ed, can admit that we don’t have the formula, then we can invite students and community members to tell us how we can better serve our community.
Noah Montague:
Yeah, I completely agree.
Ayanna Ross:
And the students are our community. That is what we’re here for. And I think sometimes there’s an internal thing that people have about striving for the title, the raise, the whatever. It keeps them from seeing their true purpose. And it keeps people stagnant because you don’t feel like you’re getting the recognition you deserve, you’re going to stop investing in your students. That seems counterproductive. But I see it happen, and I’ve been that person who felt undervalued and felt like I’m going to start taking me away from these people, like they don’t deserve me. But that didn’t serve me. That didn’t help me. It only made me feel worse because I was not living up to the potential of who I knew I was as a person and as a professional.
Noah Montague:
Yeah. And if we’re not doing that, how are we supposed to empower students to do that?
Ayanna Ross:
Correct. So again, I think it goes back to that self-awareness piece. We have to be aware of our biases, our blind sides, and where we still have space to grow.
Noah Montague:
For sure. This was fun.
Ayanna Ross:
Yeah, I really liked this.
Noah Montague:
Oh man. Well, with that, that wraps up our time today. I think that ended on a pretty good point too. So I’m happy about that. But Ayanna, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had fun as well.
Ayanna Ross:
I did. I really did. Thank you so much.
Noah Montague:
Thank you for joining. And thank you all for joining us on today’s episode of ResEdChat. If you have an idea for a topic or a person that you would like to us to have on the show, please let us know by reaching out to Roompact. But until then, keep taking care of yourselves and have a great rest of your day. Bye-bye.
