In episode 5 of Roompact's series on residence life and education during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Paul Brown discusses how intentional conversations as a strategy in your engagement with students can be especially useful during this time. Intentional Conversations are one-on-one meetings between student staff and residents that are guided by a suggested set of... Continue Reading →
Residential Curriculum Q&A: Where does Residence Life Community Building Fit Into a Curriculum?
Residential curricula are focused on student learning. Ultimately, curricular approaches primarily concern themselves with what we hope students will know and be able to do once their time with us comes to an end. Community building falls outside the learning-focus of the curriculum but it is critically important for its effectiveness. A switch to a... Continue Reading →
🦠 ResLife & Corona Episode 3: Leveraging Technology for Success
In episode 3 of Roompact's series on residence life and education during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Paul Brown discusses trends he's seeing in the adoption of technology and software tools to help staff navigate this unusual time. He also muses on ways this will impact residence life practice in the future, even when the pandemic... Continue Reading →
🦠 ResLife & Corona Episode 2: Practicing Essentialism. What matters most?
In episode 2 of Roompact's series on residence life and education during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Paul Brown discusses the concept of essentialism and how it can be useful as you pivot your practice to these new realities. The concept of essentialism comes from a work by author Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of... Continue Reading →
ResLife Office Set-Ups: Karen Lohr, Hall Director, University of Connecticut
Where do you use Roompact? I use Roompact in my office and also on my work iPhone. What is your office set-up? My office is part of a suite of offices shared with maintenance & housekeeping, RA programming storage space, and my student workers. One of the highlights of my office is my service dog... Continue Reading →
3 Res Life Quick Tips for Assessing a Program
Roompact's "Res Life Quick Tips" series highlights ideas and suggestions you can utilize in your residence life and equation practice. Take a look through our past quick tips. Programs are often an essential part of a residence life program's educational and engagement efforts. But how do we know they are effective? Being able to construct... Continue Reading →
🦠 ResLife & Corona Episode 1: How Residential Curriculum Can Help
Much like everyone in the field, we're exploring new ways to do our work and new methods for reaching those we work for. At Roompact, we're experimenting with video and specifically how we can use a VLOG format (Video-Blog) to help engage and educate our audience. It seemed only fitting that for our first foray... Continue Reading →
Curricular Approach Q&A: Can a Curricular Approach Work on a Campus with a Large Commuter Population?
Yes. A curricular approach to student affairs work utilizes the processes and methods of teachers in the classroom and adapts it to the out-of-class setting. Setting learning objectives and planning strategies and engagements with students works regardless of whether they live on campus or not. You may need to think about your curriculum differently, however.... Continue Reading →